


The Pizzaria: A Sordid Tale of Destiny, Evil and Garlic

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Cooking, Food, Humor, Injury, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:50:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 36,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin





	1. Chapter 1

Ron Weasley woke up at six in the morning, stretched, and threw the curtains open to face the rising sun. He sat down at his desk, stared at it for five solid minutes, and then closed the curtains and went back to sleep.

At eight, nine and ten he peeked out from under his blanket to track a bar of light leaking through the curtains as it progressed across the wall. At ten-twenty-six, the protestations of his bladder won out over the warmth and comfort of bed, and he shuffled downstairs in his pyjamas to have a pee. He also showered and wanked, rinsed off, and only then realized he didn't have a towel. He blotted himself dry with his pyjamas and tromped naked and dripping back up to his room, where he donned his last pair of clean socks and the freshest pair of boxers he could find. He considered going back to bed, but the hot water had mostly woken him up, so he supposed he might as well face the day already in progress.

In a dressing gown with more than a few loose threads trailing off the hem, he made his way down to the kitchen past the four vacant bedrooms of the Burrow. Errol was unconscious on a mound of kitchen-table debris, but he was still breathing, so Ron collected the scroll from his beak and let him lie.

_Ron,  
Still having a lovely time in Ibiza. Wish you were here! Dad has been off exploring the Muggle shops again, causing trouble, but don't worry I'm certain the Muggles haven't noticed a thing. I have been relaxing on the beach and catching up on my reading. Did you know Gilderoy Lockhart has published a new book? Quite exciting!  
Pictures enclosed. We will see you at the end of the month! Be careful!!! _

All my love and kisses,   
Your Mum

PS remember to eat!

The pictures were mostly of Arthur Weasley, sunburnt, off-center and out of focus, waving from a variety of breathtaking tropical settings. A few apparently contained Molly, but she was almost never entirely in the frame, and sometimes the only sign of her was a wisp of gray-red hair at the bottom of the frame or the trailing edge of a festive tropical muumuu. Both his parents' thumbs occasionally swooped into the shots to occlude all or most of the image. Ron hung them all on the cold-cupboard anyway, along with the batches from the many weeks before, and next to the ragged strip of parchment labeled simply JOBS.

He checked Errol's pulse again, then found a package of corn flakes in the back of the pantry. He munched on them while listening to the afternoon serials on the WWN. Mindy was having Aurelius's love child, Agatha plotted to kidnap Eamon's dog, and Brock found out that Humphrey was his long-lost dad, which Ron had predicted two weeks ago when Nunciata died without revealing the countercurse to Zelda's jinxed corset. More post arrived, but after checking the names Ron used it to elevate Errol's legs instead of reading it.

After the serials, he peeked through the first-floor curtains at the glittering late-summer light that spilled heavy and golden across the back garden. He finished the corn flakes and made a ham sandwich for an early tea, washed it down with a butterbeer, and clipped the loose threads off the bottom of his dressing grown with a pair of nail scissors. Eventually, he dragged himself back to the cold-cupboard and looked at the list marked JOBS, finger tracing down a line of tick-marks to the bottom.

"Right," he said aloud. "Chickens."

He pulled on galoshes and braced himself to step outside. That beautiful syrupy sunlight spilled over him, making him flinch and squint while he yawned. Maybe he should take a nap first? No, chickens first, nap later, and then he could warm up some shepherd's pie for supper. If there was any shepherd's pie left. And if it hadn't gone over. He'd have to check.

"Chickens," he muttered again, and stomped across the yard.

The chickens squalled and flapped at him, so he tossed a handful of feed in a random direction. The henhouse slouched against the side of the house, soft grey boards shrugging apart at the seams; a broody hen poked her head through one of the gaps to eye Ron with a certain avian malevolence. The henhouse had been here, just like this, for as long as he could remember, but when his parents left at the beginning of summer for their long holiday, they asked him specifically to see about "fixing it up a bit." He kicked one wall of the sad little structure experimentally and was only vaguely surprised when the wood gave way entirely. Fix it up, right. _Might as well build them a new one entirely,_ he thought darkly, and went back inside to make a cup of tea.

He was almost finished with his tea, and still prodding the broken boards with his toe, when the sound of a double Apparition wafted up from the bottom of the hill. Ron's wand was in hand in an instant, but it took him a moment longer to spot the two small dark figures in the lane that led up to the house. Who would Apparate here instead of using the Floo? None of his brothers, not Ginny, not Harry or Hermione or Neville, and his parents were still on holiday...Luna Lovegood might come by, but she was just as likely to walk, or fly, or possibly dig an elaborate tunnel into the cellar. (The last issue of the _Quibbler_ had reported on a series of abductions by what were apparently enormous, invisible, ill-tempered bats.) That left strangers, and unannounced strangers at that, but also strangers who weren't particularly worried about being caught if they were going to Apparate so close to the housethat ruled out Dark assassins and ambush journalists. But who else would bother to come seek him out?

It occurred to Ron suddenly that he might want to put on trousers.

He dove behind the henhouse (earning more flat, beady stares of contempt from the chickens) and peeked over the edge, wand still at the ready. The two little figures were strolling up the lane now, showing no particular concern for stealth, but they were still a bit too far away to identify. Keeping the intruders in his sights, Ron moved back towards the kitchen door, only tripping over two chickens in the process. He scrambled inside and rooted through a stack of laundry until he located a pair of jeans that were not torn, stained, or inches too small; he struggled to get them on until he remembered he was still wearing the galoshes. After much hopping about, he got his trousers on straight and his feet in a pair of frayed old house shoes that, on second thought, had probably been slept in by Errol in the recent past. No matter; he tied down the sash of his dressing gown and crept into the darkened foyer.

He hadn't even been in this room of the house for weeks, and it was getting more than slightly dusty. The curtains were still drawn, just as his mum had left them, including the ones on either side of the front door. Ron crouched under one of these and carefully folded the edge of the curtain back, pressing his face against the glass to get the measure of his visitors.

He found himself looking directly into a pair of pale, bloodshot eyes.

"Yearrgh!" Ron threw himself backwards and raised his wand, but accomplished nothing except landing very hard and painfully on his arse. The curtain fell back innocuously, and a moment later, someone knocked at the door. Pulling himself up on an end table, Ron limped back to the door and, very carefully, cracked it open.

Draco Malfoy and Blaise Zabini smiled at him in unison.

Ron slammed the door shut again.

"Weasley?" Malfoy called, and Ron flattened himself against the door, just in case they tried to blast their way in. "Weasley, we do know you're in there, there's no point in hiding from us."

Ron looked about frantically at the dusty foyer and his own shabby clothes. "I don't suppose," he called back, "that you could come back another time?"

"No," Malfoy said.

"Maybe," Zabini said at the same time. There was a mysterious thump from the other side of the door. "If now is inconvenient for you, that is," Zabini added.

Ron, wand still up, carefully opened the doorjust a sliver. Malfoy and Zabini were still standing on the stoop, in sober dark robes, and Zabini was still smiling. Malfoy was scowling, and had a dusty scotch mark on his shin. "What d'you want?" Ron asked warily.

Malfoy brushed down his robes and turned up his nose. "Weasley, we have a business proposition for you."

"A very lucrative one," Zabini added. "If you have a moment of your time to spare."

"As a matter of fact, I don't," Ron said. "Good day."

He tried to shut the door but Malfoy suddenly leaned hard against it. "As a matter of fact, you do," he said, "or I'll eat Blaise's hat. Let us in."

"No," Ron said.

"Please?"

"Go _away,_ Malfoy."

"Weasley," he grunted (he had got his foot in the jam and was pushing hard, while Zabini looked on with faint discomfort), "trust me. You really want to hear this."

"I've never trusted you," Ron pointed out.

"You did too!"

"Did not!"

"I saved your life!"

"You tripped me while you were trying to run away!"

"It's the same thing!"

Zabini tugged on Draco's shoulder, pulling him back from the door, but Draco stubbornly kept his foot wedged in placeor perhaps it was merely stuck. "Weasley," Zabini said, "it won't hurt you at all to listen to us, and at the moment that's all we're asking. You're free to send us away later. Does that sound like a deal?"

Ron stepped behind the door and considered several things, such as the time of day, the henhouse, his own three-week growth of not-exactly-a-beard, and the state of the kitchen. Malfoy wiggled his foot impatiently. Ron supposed it wouldn't exactly kill him to let them in to talkthe chickens could live in their firetrap a day longer, the evil-minded little bastards, they'd been living there happily for decades. And, Ron decided, the state of the house shouldn't really matter eithereven in a dressing down and none-too-clean house shoes, he was still a bloody decorated war hero, wasn't he? He could stand up to some random pair of Slytherins. He could even stand up to Zabini and Malfoy, and if this all turned out to be a cunning plot

Wait. What if it _was_ a cunning plot?

Ron peered around the edge of the door again. "What sort of business are we talking about, then?" he asked warily.

Draco and Blaise looked at one another, and Draco smiled. "It's an exciting opportunity in a high-growth industry."

"What's that mean?"

"We can explain it inside" Blaise said.

Ron shook his head. "What are you up to?"

"It's nothing evil, if that's what you're asking," Malfoy said irately. "You know for a fact we've quit that."

"Snakes don't shed their skin."

"Actually, they do."

Ron considered this, then shook his head. "Tell me from out there and maybe I'll let you inside."

Malfoy jerked his foot out of the door, almost causing Ron to slam it; he stomped off the stoop muttering darkly about Mad-Eye Moody. Blaise smiled altogether too widely. "It's an exciting opportunity in the food-service industry," he said cheerfully. "Now may we come in?"

Ron did shut the door to think about this for a moment. He opened it again. "You're serious?"

"Unfortunately," Malfoy said, with a pained smile. "Now can we get inside before my foot swells up and falls off?"

Ron let them inside. They gave him funny looks all the way through the house, right up until the moment he shoved a pile of plates, post and Errol off the kitchen table. They declined when Ron offered them tea, but accepted chairs, and he noticed for the first time that Blaise had a slim briefcase with him. It was, in fact, chained to his wrist. "What's that?" he asked. "And what the hell are you talking about, food service?"

"The answer to the first is, in part, an answer to the second," Zabini said, leaning forward slightly. "And so to address the second question firstDraco and I are opening a restaurant."

Ron laughed. Zabini did not. Malfoy just rolled his eyes. "Youwhat?" Ron asked. "Restaurant? Huh?"

"Let me put this in words that you can understand," Draco said. "Blaise and I need money. Well, Blaise needs money, I need a capital investment. Blaise, allegedly, can cook. We are going to start a restaurant."

Blaise held up the briefcase. "My grandmother's recipe collection. A thousand years of the finest Roman cuisine, distilled into absolute perfection, readable only by a true descendent of her blood." He smiled. "My mother was furious she couldn't sell it off for cash after the funeral. So were my last four stepfathers."

Ron blinked at him. "And...you can cook?"

"That's not important," Malfoy said. "What _is_ important is that, unfortunately for all of us, we need your help to make this restaurant a reality."

"Wait, what?" Ron asked. "My help? What have I got to do with anything?"

Blaise and Malfoy sighed in unison, and Blaise actually slumped in his chair. Malfoy leaned forward. "Weasley, believe me, we don't like this any more than you do," he said. "But when it comes to dealing with the average wizard on the street, Blaise and I have a bit of a...liability, as it were."

"What, that you're evil?"

Ron regretted the words almost as soon as he said them, but Zabini only rolled his eyes, and if possible, Malfoy stuck his nose up even higher. "No," Malfoy said, "but as you so perfectly demonstrate, for some reason everyone thinks so. I suppose we could make ourselves badges that say 'Really Quite Nice,' but somehow I doubt that will inspire a great deal of confidence in our sincerity."

"Right," Ron said, "of course." And for some reasonmaybe because Malfoy really had saved his life that once, even if it wasn't deliberate"Sorry."

Malfoy raised an eyebrow at that, but Blaise took over the talking. "Now, this is the part where you come in, Weasley. Nobody seems particularly willing to buy Italian food from former spies, regardless of which side we were spying for. In fact, we've had a terrible amount of trouble even dealing with the Ministry for it, and they're the ones who issued our pardons."

"Apparently they thought we'd take our liberty and faff off to parts unknown, never to trouble them again," Malfoy added. "And frankly, I'm halfway tempted to oblige them."

"Why don't you?" Ron asked. "Really, why not? Or at least wait a bit, until it's not all so...y'know. _Recent."_

At this point, Blaise looked distinctly uncomfortable, though he also had his chin in the air like Malfoy, so it might've been mistaken for gas. "My financial situation won't allow it," he said. "Mother has cut me off from the trust fund and married a Brazilian, and as for my other family..." He raised the briefcase and shrugged.

Ron glanced at Malfoy, who snorted. "What are you looking at me for? I'm in it for the potential return on my investment."

"Not, you know, to help out a friend in need?"

"What do I look like, a charitable foundation?"

Ron snorted. "Real charming, Malfoy."

Malfoy turned to Zabini. "Blaise, if I attempted to lend you money in some spirit of friendship, camaraderie or general altruism, what would you do?"

"Restrain you until the curse wore off," Zabini answered promptly.

"There, you see?" Malfoy said. "There's no generosity between friends like us, Weasley, only good solid business. And this restaurant will be a fantastic business, if only we could get past the paranoid parchment-pushers who can't see past a few rather unfortunate but thoroughly outdated headlines. Which is why we are _here,_ talking to _you._ Is that perfectly clear to you?"

"Clear as mud, maybe," Ron said, and crossed his arms over his chest. "What do you want me to do, write you a letter of recommendation? Beg for peace, love, and understanding across the wizarding world?"

"Merlin, no," Malfoy said, looking a little alarmed at the thought. "Why would we want that?"

"You just said"

"Weasley," Zabini said, and it sounded like he was at the end of his rope. "What we want from you is very simple. Come with us while we talk to some people. Look suitably heroicmaybe you can wear that Order of Merlin they were so eager to thrust on you a few months ago. Smile. We will do all the talking, and your mere presence will generate the necessary goodwill to achieve our ends."

Ron frowned at them both. "That's it?" he demanded. "I mean, that's all you want? Just to have me smile and nod and look heroic?"

"And possibly engage in some personal hygiene beforehand, but in general terms, yes," Draco said. "You may have to sign a few documents, but it won't be anything important. Or at least nothing legally binding. I'll take care of everything."

"And when you've got your restaurant?"

"You're free to walk away." Malfoy spread his hands wide and smiled. "Nothing keeping you. Even if you wanted to hang about, we wouldn't allow it, so don't worry your hideous red head one bit. You won't be responsible for anything."

It sounded, among other things, like a trick, a delusion, and a way to put off dealing with the henhouse. Ron glanced from Zabini to Malfoy and back, not sure if he was waiting for encouragement or for someone to burst out of the pantry with noisemakers, shouting _Gotcha!_ Yet this was also a bit too surreal even for Fred and Georgetoo surreal and not enough explosions. At least, Ron hoped there wouldn't be explosions. "Why me?" he decided to ask. "Why not Harry or Neville or...well...anyone else in the world?"

"The only others with the necessary degree of celebrity are, regrettably, otherwise occupied in such a way that I doubt we'd be able to get their attention," Zabini said. "Except for Lovegood, and frankly, I'd rather eat candles."

"Harry'd take an afternoon off to help" Ron started to say.

Malfoy folded his arms across his chest; if he pointed his chin any higher he'd tip the chair over. "I could go the rest of my life without having anything further to do with Harry Potter."

Ron winced because, yeah, he should've seen that comingtoo late to take it back, though. "So I was your last resort, huh? You two sure know how to make a bloke feel special."

"If we wanted to make you feel special, Weasley, we'd have brought flowers," Malfoy said. "What we want is for you to help us. I mean, it's not like you've got anything better to do."

Ron opened his mouth to protest, thought about the henhouse, and shut it again. Chickens or Malfoy and Zabini? Strangely enough, it was not a difficult choicethe chickens, after all, hadn't saved anybody's life (even by accident). The chickens weren't suffering from the bad consequences of a good decision. The chickens shit and ate and gave him dirty looks, whereas Malfoy and Zabini just have him dirty looks (and Ron wasn't responsible for anything else.)

Besides, it might be good for a laugh later on. Something to tell Harry, if he ever remembered to write him back.

"What are you selling, exactly, then?" he found himself asking. "Just whatever's in the cookbook?"

Blaise seemed to take this as the acquiescence it was, and smiled broadly. "Well, I plan to start out by focusing on a dish called _pizza_Muggles seem to have made an art of selling it."

"And since turning Muggle seems to be all the rage these days," Malfoy said with a bit of a sigh, "we thought we might as well turn some gold on the fad while we could."

It sounded reasonable to Ron. If they were actually in business a month from now, perhaps he could get some for his dad, claim they were eating a real Muggle dinner. "So what do I do?" he asked them.

"For starters?" Malfoy said. "You can get rid of that hideous skin disease on your jaw and cheeks. In general? Be awake and presentable tomorrow morning at nine. We'll take care of the rest."

Before Ron could protest the slander of his beard, Malfoy and Zabini were standing. Malfoy simply walked out; Zabini smiled at Ron, and shook his hand long and slow. "A pleasure doing business with you, Weasley," he said.

Ominous, that. Ron smiled back at Blaise's straight white teeth. "I sure hope so."


	2. Chapter 2

Malfoy's idea of "taking care of the rest" turned out to be more complicated than Ron might've anticipated. He dragged himself out of bed at eight in the morning, showered, shaved (but left a bit of rebellious fuzz about his mouth and chinthat almost counted as a beard, right?) and was working his way through the last of the reheated shepherd's pie when Zabini and Malfoy arrived. They took one look at his clothesblue dress robes, nothing wrong with themand rolled their eyes in unison. "I was afraid of this," Malfoy said loudly. "Come along, Weasley, we have a few more stops to make."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Ron demanded.

Zabini looked him up and down. "We wanted you to look like a war hero, not an indigent."

"And didn't I tell you to shave that abomination off?"

They marched down the lane, realized that Ron wasn't coming with them, and marched right back up. "Weasley," Malfoy said. "We had an arrangement."

"Well, yeah," Ron said. "But it seems to me like I don't lose out on anything if I back out of it."

"You can't back out!" Malfoy said, eyes widening. "You promised!"

"You're a Gryffindor, aren't you?" Zabini demanded.

"Yes, exactly!" Malfoy actually poked him in the chest. "You're a Gryffindor! You're supposed to be all noble and things! Backing out now wouldn't be noble! Not even a little bit!"

Ron blinked at his wide eyes and the little pink spots in his cheeks; he hadn't meant to freak them out quite _that_ much. Of course, he wasn't going to stand accused of going back on his word, either. "I know that," he said quickly. "But I promised to help you, not to take orders. _I'm_ doing _you_ a favor, remember?"

"Of course," Malfoy said, and stepped backward, smoothing his robes. "I was just...you know, never mind. Were you actually planning to wear that?"

Ron sighed, but consented to Apparate to Madam Malkin's first off. Malfoy, generously, paid for a new robe, but he also spent the entire fitting critiquing Madam Malkin's fashion sense, when he wasn't disparaging Ron's personal hygiene or physique. Zabinistill chained to his recipe bookwandered in and out of the shop, either nervous or bored, and eventually stood outside nibbling on a large bar of chocolate. In the end, Ron had a sleek new business robe (the blue one was stuffed into a bag that Malfoy made off with; Ron sincerely hoped he hadn't binned it) and Madam Malkin looked as if she had developed a new ulcer. She wouldn't even talk to Malfoy, even while taking his gold, though she smiled weakly at Ron and wished him a pleasant day.

"You see?" Malfoy said when they were back on the street. "The old hag wouldn't even have allowed me in if I wasn't with you. We are being discriminated against."

"Really?" Ron asked. "I thought you were just an arsehole."

Malfoy did not deign to respond to that; instead, he made some sort of note in a small black notebook, which vanished into his breast pocket when he was done. "The next stop is going to have to be the Ministry. Come on, come on, I didn't spend good gold just to make you look pretty."

"Aw, you think I'm pretty? I'm flattered."

Zabini rattled his recipes at them. "Ministry. You can flirt with one another later." He completely ignored the way that Ron sputtered scowled at him, and even had the nerve to turn his back on Draco as they walked. Draco, manfully, didn't kill him, but from the look on his face it was a very near thing.

Ron wasn't enthusiastic about going to the Ministrythere were a few too many people there who would recognize him and wonder what he was doing with a pair of Slytherin spies-turned-aspiring pizza makers. Luck, however, seemed to be with him, because they only crossed paths with a handful of his dad's coworkers, and most of them didn't notice him; of the ones who did, three called him "Percy," so they probably didn't count. Malfoy and Zabini seemed to sense they were in enemy territory and kept their heads down, especially as the lift rattled past Magical Law Enforcement's level. Ron thought about telling them that innocent people don't have anything to hide, then remembered that they weren't technically innocent. He smiled at the other people in the lift, instead. They ignored him.

He wasn't sure where they ended upsome back-corner office with no windows and only two saggy chairs in the corridor, rather like the old Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office. Malfoy and Zabini sat in the chairs, and Ron stared them down because of it, but Zabini was still munching on his chocolate and Malfoy just glared right back. Eventually, the shaggy old warlock at the desk looked up, noticed them waiting, and spat into a large silver urn on the floor.

"Malfoy," he growled. "Zabini. What are you doing back here?"

Malfoy stood, straightened his robes, and smiled broadly. "Just come to resubmit our application, Mr. Thriggins."

"Don't bother," Thriggins said. "I've already told you, there won't be a business license available this quarter. Come back in October." He vigorously stamped some scrolls, then spat in the urn again.

Malfoy's smile twisted downward for a moment, but he rallied himself. "Actually, Mr. Thriggins, I think you'll find we've made some additions to our application."

Thriggins paused and leaned forward over his desk, raising one puffy eyebrow. "Additions? You won't be bribing _me,_ Malfoy, I can already tell you that."

"Bribe?" Zabini said, standing up. "Who said anything about bribes? We would never attempt to bribe an upstanding employee of the Ministry of Magic like you, Mr. Thrigginsthat would be _wrong."_

Thriggins may have smothered a laugh. So may have Ron.

"This is what I meant by addition, Mr. Thriggins," Malfoy said, and dragged Ron forward to stand before the desk. "Do you know who this is?"

Thriggins looked Ron up and down. Ron tried to look heroic. "No," Thriggins announced.

"This is Ronald Weasley," Malfoy said testily. "You know, Harry Potter's little helper?"

Thriggins squinted. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Ron snapped.

"Didn't think you'd be so skinny," Thriggins opined.

Ron scowled at him, and Malfoy quickly shoved him back into the corridor. "The point, Mr. Thriggins, is that WeaRon here has decided to go into business with Blaise and myself, and we need to submit an updated application with his name included. You will give separate consideration to our _updated_ application, will you not?"

Thriggins and Malfoy stared at each other for a tense moment; Thriggins sucked on his own cheeks, and Malfoy smiled until his mouth began to twitch. Ron realized he was holding his breath. Zabini munched on his chocolate.

The moment broke when Thriggins spat hugely into the urn and passed Malfoy a vivid purple form. "File it in triplicate," he said, "and pay the application fee, and we shall see."

"Of course we will," Malfoy said brightly.

An hour and a half later, they had a business license.

"You can't deny _that_ was due to your influence," Malfoy said, again making a note in his little book over lunch. "Thriggins wouldn't give us the time of day for the last week."

"He didn't even recognize me, Malfoy," Ron pointed out. "You could've gotten any idiot to come along and claimed he was a war hero."

"But we wanted this idiot," Malfoy said, poking Ron in the chest. "And he would've recognized you if you'd shaved."

Ron thrust out his fuzzy chin, then dug into his sandwich with gusto. Blaise made a face at him, but since he wasn't chewing with his mouth open or anything, Ron ignored him.

After lunch they returned to Diagon Alley and met with a witch named MacCreadle. It went more or less like the meeting with Thriggins, except that instead of spitting, Madam MacCreadle batted her sticky eyelashes at Ron and talked loudly about her many unmarried daughters. Malfoy left him to stammer and twist in the wind on that one while he and Zabini signed a lease; in fact, they almost left without him. He caught up to them in the street, Zabini carefully reading the lease and Malfoy twirling two large brass keys on a ring.

"Oi!" Ron called. "Hang on a minute!"

Malfoy glared over his shoulder. "Why are you still here?"

"You're very welcome, Malfoy," Ron said irately.

Zabini rolled his eyes and rolled up the lease. "What would you like, Weasley, a pat on the head?"

"A little gratitude would be nice!"

Malfoy stopped, turned, and pressed his hand against his heart. "Oh, Weasley, thank you from the bottom of my heart," he deadpanned. "I don't know what I ever would have done without you. I pledge you my firstborn child in gratitude, for no less a gift could ever repay the debt I now owe you for this ultimate boon, my pizzaria."

"Oh, fuck you," Ron said, and Apparated home.

It was now about two in the afternoon, and he had missed all the soap operas. The henhouse was still falling apart, the cupboards were still bare, and Errol had with owlish determination begun to wing his way back to Ibiza. Or perhaps he'd just crawled off somewhere quiet to die. Ron took off his business robes, put on his pyjamas, and sat in the back garden until nightfall drinking butterbeer and flinging the corks at the gnomes.

He awoke at six the next morning, stared at his desk for a bit, and snuggled back under the blanket for another good morning's lie-in. At eight am, a fine rain had commenced in earnest, and at eight-thirty-seven, he bolted upright in bed with his wand in hand, blinking at the blotted windows.

For a moment he sat there, heart pounding, wondering what had awakened him. The rain was gentle and steady, no gusts, no thunder, and all else in the room was quiet and still. There was his bureau, there his wardrobe, there the cage of the late and intermittently lamented Pigwidgeon, the dry fish tank, the writing desk, the trunk

The sound came again. Five stories up, it was almost inaudible. Ron scrambled out of bed and padded barefoot downstairs.

The other four bedrooms were quiet and empty as they had been all summer, and the parlor was as he had left it the night beforedusty, dim, and littered with dirty plates. He went around to scan the foyer, but it was still empty, curtains still drawn, door still locked. The only other room on the ground floor, then, was

A voice boomed from the kitchen. _"WEASLEY, GET YOUR ARSE OVER HERE RIGHT NOW!"_

Without thinking, Ron bolted through the parlor and into the kitchen, where the fireplace was alive with green flames. He had only a moment to process Malfoy's flushed face sitting in the coals, eyes wide, jaw clenched, and then he did what any self-respecting war hero, Gryffindor, or veteran of Dumbledore's Army would do: he jumped through the Floo feet-first and came spinning out with his wand up. He may have even _whooped._

Of course, when he came spinning out of the Floo he landed more or less on top of Malfoy, who apparently was not aware of the habits of war heroes, Gryffindors, or veterans of Dumbledore's Army. They tumbled together across a grimy tiled floor, and while Ron was trying to spring to his feet to take on all foes coming, Malfoy was simultaneously trying to push him away and flee. They came to rest in a swearing heap against the opposite wall, and Ron suspected that Malfoy tried to bite him. "Augh! Gerroff, Malfoy!"

"Get off? Get off?" Malfoy planted a foot in Ron's solar plexus and shoved himself away. "Merlin and Morgan, Weasley, have you gone completely _insane?" _

Ron pushed himself up against the wall and held his wand out in front, scanning the room. "Well, excuse me, Malfoy, but since you were yelling like you were being murdered...where the hell are we, anyway?"

They were standing in a dark and dingy room about the size of the Burrow's kitchen, with large greasy windows almost filling one wall. Directly opposite Ron was a mean and crumbling fireplace, and to his left, opposite the windows, was a long, dusty, waist-high counter. The room was empty but for the three of them and a few broken-down sticks of furniture, and behind the counter ominous, rusty shapes lurked in darkness.

Zabini, clutching his briefcase to his chest, uttered a high snort. "Welcome to the restaurant, Weasley. Care to place an order?"

Ron stared at him, then walked to the center of the room and turned slowly. It didn't look any better from a different angle. "Very...er...well," he said. "Congratulations?"

Blaise made a strangled chuckle and went around the end of the counter, into the darkness of the kitchen. A few metallic crashes marked his progress. Malfoy buried his face in his hands. "Don't be cute, Weasley. I may have to kill you for it."

"Why'd you call me, then?" Ron asked. "I thought it was an emergency or something!"

"You thought it was an emergency. _Does this not look like an emergency?"_ Malfoy shouted, taking in the building in one sweeping gesture. "This place is an absolute sty! We can't possibly turn it into a restaurant, it's...it's _unclean!_ I think I'm getting ill just standing here!"

Ron sighed, and rubbed his forehead, where a headache was starting to build now that the adrenaline rush was passing. "And what the hell do you want me to do about it?"

"Fix it!" Malfoy said, and waved his hand vaguely at the kitchen. On cue, there was a string of thumps and clatters that ended with a wet sound. Somewhere, Blaise moaned.

"You're the one who rented the place, Malfoy!" Ron shot back, folding his arms. "Besides, I already did my part of the deal. This isn't my look-out."

Malfoy made a whining noise, deep in his throat. "Fine. Leave us hanging. Leave poor Blaise to twist in the wind, alone and friendless and financially destitute."

"Isn't that your fault?"

"You're missing the point entirely!"

Another crash, and Zabini came scampering out of the kitchen, clutching his briefcase to his chest. "Draco, we can't stay here," he said feverishly, staring into the shadows. "It's not _safe_ here."

"I know, Blaise," Malfoy said soothingly. "If Weasley won't help us, we'll just have to give up our dream and find some other way to keep you from starving to death."

Ron pressed his face into his hands. "Malfoy, just so you know, this isn't convincing me."

"Well, what will convince you?" He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a Galleon. "Gold? I can pay you, of course, if that's what you're after."

"I don't want your gold, Malfoy."

"A stake in the restaurant, then? Blaise, you'd be perfectly willing to split your share in the restaurant, wouldn't you?"

"No," Zabini said.

Malfoy grinned weakly. "Well, we'll work something out."

"I don't want a stake in your restaurant either," Ron said.

"Then what in Merlin's name _do_ you want?"

Ron decided not to take this as a deeply philosophical question requiring intense introspection. "Right now I want to go back to bed," he said. "But in particular, I _don't_ want to help you any more than I already have."

"Why _not?"_ Malfoy demanded.

"Let's see, because it worked out so well for me last time, didn't it?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Alright, so perhaps Blaise and I were a bit, er, the point _is,_ that's in the past. We're talking about now. Why won't you help us now?"

"Because it's your bloody restaurant!" Ron snapped. "It's your shop! It's your problem! How many times do I have to repeat myself?"

"Honestly, Weasley, if I had the first clue what to do here, I wouldn't be asking you, would I?" Malfoy sneered. "This isn't exactly my area of expertise!"

"And you think it's mine?" Ron asked.

"Well, no," Malfoy said, "but you're all...common...and such. I sort of assumed you'd have an instinctive understanding of the issue."

Ron squeezed his eyes shut. "Did you actually expect that to help? 'Cause it's really not."

"Weasley, look, do you want me to get on my knees? Because I will get on my knees here." And Malfoy did just that, right on the filthy floor. He even grabbed Ron's pyjama leg. "Fix the restaurant. Please fix the restaurant. I beg you."

The sad part was, he looked deadly earnest when he said it. Or at least as earnest as he ever got. His eyes were wide and a little wild-looking, and his hands hung limp at his sides, palms out, beseeching. It was perhaps the only thing that kept Ron from kicking him in the stomach and going home.

Instead, Ron took a deep breath. "Malfoy, I am not going to fix your restaurant."

Malfoy leapt to his feet and rubbed uselessly at the large dusty smooches on his knees. "Well, fine then, if you're just going to be difficult about it"

"I'm not finished!" Ron snapped. "I'm not going to fix it, but I will _help you_ fix it _yourselves,_ if you want."

Blaise perked up a bit; Malfoy's eyes narrowed. "What, exactly, is the distinction, might I ask?" he asked slowly.

"We split the work," Ron said. _"Evenly._ And the minute I catch you skiving off, I'm leaving, do you understand me?"

Malfoy regarded him for a moment, then shared an inscrutable look with Blaise. They both abruptly thrust out their hands. "Agreed," Malfoy declared. "When do we start?"

Ron frowned at them both. "I mean it, you know," he said. "I'm not your house elf."

"Because that is such a probable cause for confusion," Malfoy said.

"Promise you'll do your fair share?"

"Weasley, I would promise you my first-born son," Malfoy said, "if you will just make this place into something other than a menace to public health. Now, are we going to shake like civilized wizards or must I get back on my knees?"

Ron shook, slowly, first with Malfoy and then with Zabini. "All right," he said. "All right, we're agreed."

Malfoy slapped his palms together and rubbed them, either in eagerness or because he suspected that Ron has something nasty on his hands. "Excellent!" he declared. "Where do we begin?"

"Well," Ron said, "I am going to begin by going home."

"Weasley! We agreed"

"I need _trousers,_ Malfoy!" Ron snapped.

Malfoy blinked, and for the first time all morning seemed to notice that under the dressing gown, Ron was in worn flannel pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt that, at some point, had acquired a rather daring hole over the left nipple. "Oh," he said. "Um, well. Carry on."

"Thank you," Ron sighed, and Disapparated back to the Burrow. As he changed his clothes, he couldn't help but wonder what he was getting himself into _now._ It wasn't as if that filthy place was such a great improvement over the henhousein fact, he suspected that letting a few chickens run around over there might actually improve it somehow. At the very least, it'd prove that the very air wasn't going to slowly poison them.

But, as Malfoy freely admitted, he didn't know what the hell he was doing. Ron didn't exactly pity him for not knowing how to scrub a floor or charm away rust, but there was no denying that he and Zabini were pretty pathetic in their helplessness. And even if the pizzeria-to-be wasn't an improvement over the henhouse, it was at least a change, something to do besides listen to the wireless and answer the rambling letters from Harry and Hermione and his family. Once the novelty wore off, or Malfoy pissed him off too much, or he just got bored again, Ron could do something else. Maybe he could write some rambling letters of his own while he was at it.

In short, there were worse things he could be doing, and he repeated this to himself as he gathered a mop, a bucket, and the industrial-sized bottle of Mrs. Skower's All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover from under the sink. As an afterthought, he collected some sponges and brushes and his mum's book of _1001 Simple Spells for Dealing with Dirt._ If all else failed, he reckoned, they could beat the roaches to death with it.

Breathing deeply, he Apparated back to the pizzeria, and they all got down to business. Mostly.


	3. Chapter 3

The initial assault on the pizzeria took three days, and Ron expected that at any moment Malfoy and Zabini would give up and call for retreat. It didn't happen. They certainly complainedoh, did they complainbut they did it _while_ scrubbing, scraping and toting rubbish, not _instead of_ it. Ron was grudgingly impressed, and also a little disappointed, because every day they didn't give up was a day he had to get up early and work right along side thembut an agreement was an agreement, and it was a change of pace, which he supposed could be worse. There could be chickens involved. Instead, he just got Malfoy.

Malfoy, true to his word, was utterly incompetent when it came to any form of manual labor. When Zabini flatly refused to enter the shop's dank and disturbing cellar, Malfoy attempted to renegotiate the deal. "We'll stay up here and start on the kitchen, how does that sound?" he said while edging away from the cellar stairs. "You can just, er, sort things out down there, and we'll be perfectly fine up here, in the warmth and light. Mopping, of course."

"Even split, Malfoy," Ron reminded him. "I'm not going down there by myself."

"Perhaps we should arm ourselves first?"

Ron ended up grabbing him by the collar and dragging him down the stairs, leading with his wand. For light, of course. He didn't actually think there might be anything dangerous down there...even if it did remind him, slightly, of a few nests of Inferi they'd run across the previous winter. There were puddles of standing water on the stone floor, a few empty and rotting barrels of something vaguely organic, andhe shuddered_cobwebs._ "Bloody hell, this place is a wreck," Ron muttered, lighting the lamps with a wave of his wand.

"Yes, but it's our wreck," Malfoy muttered. "Unfortunately."

"How much are you renting it for again?" Ron asked. "Because it's probably way too much."

"As if you know anything about real estate," Malfoy said. He nudged one of the barrels with his foot, then leapt backwards when it collapsed in a puff of dust and rot.

"I know enough to know this place is a hole." Ron examined the barrels in passing, but whatever had been in them was unidentifiable; he vanished them in bunches, so that only the smell was left behind.

"This is just to start out with," Malfoy declared, examining something slimy on the wall. "We'll invest in something better once the restaurant starts to turn a profit."

"Why wait? It's not like you can't afford it..."

"I didn't hire you to make business decisions," Malfoy said severely, and hexed the slime away, leaving a black scorch mark instead.

"You didn't hire me at all," Ron pointed out. "Bloody hell, we're going to have to seal up all these walls..."

They went back upstairs to collect galoshes and mops, and to check on Zabini, who was prodding an enormous, partially disassembled stove. "How goes it, Blaise?" Malfoy called.

"Slowly," Zabini said with a frown. "You weren't planning to light any matches soon, were you?"

"No," Ron said. "Why?"

"Er. No reason." He twiddled a pipe a bit. "I think."

Ron checked his dad's copy of _Fantastic Fixes for Household Hassles_ until he found a spell for leaky foundations. When he looked up, he noticed Malfoy hunched over on an upturned bucket, scribbling in his little black notebook. "What's that?" Ron asked.

"None of your business," Malfoy said, adding emphatic little strokes of a quill. Ron leaned over him and tried to read over his shoulderwell, around his head, really. Malfoy pressed the book against his chest and scowled. "Do you mind?"

"Just curious," Ron said.

"Yes, well, look what happened to the cat." Malfoy blew on the wet ink a moment, then shoved the book in his back pocket and picked up the bucket. "Come on, come on, back to the swamp."

"I saw you writing in that yesterday," Ron said as they tramped down the stairs. "What is it, your diary?"

"Don't be absurd." Malfoy dropped his bucket in front of a particularly large puddle and began mopping aggressively. "Men don't keep diaries. We keep journals."

"Well, is it you"

"No!"

Ron crouched at an arbitrary damp spot on the wall and searched for the leak. "Then what's the big secret?" A horrible thought occurred to him. "You're not writing poetry in there, are you?"

"Weasley," Malfoy said, "I worry that if you were any less intelligent, you would forget how to _breathe."_

Ron wedged his wand between two damp stones and plugged the leak, or what he hoped was the leak. "Fine," he said. "So what's the big secret? If it's not your _journal_ and it's not some mushy poem"

"If you _really_ must know," Malfoy said, "it is my List."

Ron looked over his shoulder at him. "List? As in your shopping list?"

"Of course not," Malfoy snarled. "Why would I care if you saw my shopping list?"

"I dunno. Maybe you're shopping for prunes or ladies' underwear or something."

Malfoy paused, and pressed his forehead against the mop handle. "Please remind me why I keep you around again."

"'Cause you're a great nancing coward who can't do his own chores?" Ron offered. He stood up, popped his back and found himself face to face with the largest, hairiest spider he had ever seen outside the Forbidden Forest.

When its smoking corpse came to a rest at Malfoy's feet, he raised an eyebrow at Ron. Ron gave him the finger.

They worked in silence for a while, or near-silence; Malfoy continually sighed and grumbled under his breath as he slapped the mop between the floor and the bucket. Eventually Ron decided that the most dignified thing to do would be to pretend nothing had happened, and also, that conversation would get Malfoy to quit making noises. "So," he said. "List."

"Yes," Malfoy said. "I have one."

"What's it a list of?"

Malfoy mopped in relative silence for a moment. "I am keeping a list," he said quietly, "of all the people who have wronged me during my current period of relative disenfranchisement, so that one day I will be able to exact a precisely-calibrated degree of vicious revenge against them all."

Ron blinked at him for a moment, but he didn't look up from his mopping. "You're serious?"

"Of course not. That's my idea of a clever jest."

"You're keeping a _hit list?"_

Malfoy snorted. "Hardly. There are remarkably few people in the world I would actually care about enough to kill. Take that Thriggins bastardit would be so much more satisfactory to put him out of a job and leave him to suffer."

"That's..." Ron didn't know what to call that. "Well. Reckon everybody needs a hobby."

"This isn't just a _hobby,_ Weasley," Malfoy said. "This is a promise. This is a strategy. This is a long-term plan incorporating multiple elements, with the ultimate goal of restoring the name of Malfoy to its rightful status in Wizarding Britain."

"With revenge fantasies?" Ron asked.

"I told you, it's not a fantasy." Malfoy thrust his mop aggressively into the bucket, which skidded across the floor. "The List is only a start. The pizzeria is only a start. One day I will restore my family's reputation, and then everyone who dismissed me during my hour of need will pay."

"Your 'hour of need'?" Ron demanded. "Are you serious? 'Cause, I dunno, I think I'd be more worked up about your _year of absolute evil._ Y'know, if it was me."

Malfoy sneered at him. "Oh, yes, Weasley, keep talking. Just because you haven't got an ounce of ambition to your name"

"Hey!" Ron blurted. "I've got plenty of ambition, thanks."

"Oh, please," Malfoy said. "If you had an ounce of ambition you wouldn't even be here. I hired you because you barely have enough ambition to put on trousers by four o'clock in the afternoon, if you can be bothered to recall."

"You didn't _hire_ me," Ron said, plugging a rather large gap in the mortar so he wouldn't be tempted to turn his wand on Malfoy. "If _you_ can be bothered to recall."

Malfoy snorted. "Semantics. The point is, Weasley, that man whose primary life goal at present seems to be to set new lows in personal hygiene has no right to criticize the plans of another. At least I _have_ a plan, which is far more than you can say for yourself."

"I've got plans," Ron protested. "Loads of them. And stuff."

"Really." Malfoy leaned against his mop. "Share, please, I beg you."

Ron closely examined the masonry (and hexed another spider) rather than look Malfoy in the eye. "Well," he said, "I've got to, you knowI've got options."

"Have you."

_"Yes,"_ Ron said. "Lots of them. I'm a bloody war hero, remember? It's why you wanted me. I've got to consider all my options instead of, y'know, rushing into something."

"You do seem to be in quite a hurry, don't you?"

Ron scowled at him. "Look, you go enjoy your wicked plots, okay? I'm sorry I even brought it up."

"But I'm so enjoying this," Malfoy said with a little smirk. "Tell me, Weasley, what are all these options you are so carefully weighing while wallowing in your little hut? Endorsement deals? Marriage proposals?"

Yes, all that and morethe weeks after the end of the war had seen Ron inundated with owl post, offering jobs and occasionally a little something extra. It didn't seem to matter that he was nineteen, that he had no NEWTs, or that his primary practical experience was hiding from and fighting against various Dark wizards. Ron had considered all the offers...well, most of them...okay, to be honest, there had been so many that he'd had no idea where to start, and thus hadn't. There had only ever been one career he'd really thought about having, anyway, when he thought about oneand then he'd found himself in the papers and on the wireless, they'd won the battle and won the war, and everything had seemed to be just within reach...

A wet, stinking mop hit the wall inches from his face. "Hello," Malfoy said, "did you enjoy your nap?"

"Piss off," Ron said, and shoved the mop out of the way.

"I didn't realize your unemployment was a painful subject to contemplate."

"Says the bloke who's keeping a list of all the people who hurt his feelings."

"That's not painful," Malfoy said. "In fact, I enjoy it quite a lot."

Ron ignored him for a moment, focusing instead on a particularly large and leaky gap between stones. He did so have ambition, and goals, and plansor at least he'd had, and it wasn't his fault they'd fallen through, and Malfoy could just shut the hell up. It wasn't his fault, and if it just hadn't"I was gonna be an Auror," he blurted, digging at the crumbling mortar.

"Really." Malfoy had a way of dragging the word out that made Ron want to hit him before he'd even finished a syllable.

"I was," Ron snapped. "But I...I couldn't qualify for it. So now I'm...biding my time. For the next opportunity, sort of thing."

Malfoy chuckled. "What, you couldn't pass the exams without Granger whispering the answers in your ear?"

"I thought we used to have a rule," Ron said, "where you weren't allowed to talk about Hermione. You know, _ever."_

Malfoy ignored this. "It's not like you've got Potter's credentials as a slayer of evil-doers, after all, or Granger's brain, or even Longbottom's little dark-horse tale of the idiot made good," he carried on, not even bothering to keep mopping. "Frankly, I'm surprised they even let you in the door."

"They invited me in," Ron snapped. "I turned them down."

Malfoy's smirked crumpled a bit. "Oh, I see," he said. "So it's that you're entirely insane, is it?"

"I couldn't have qualified on the physical exam, so I didn't bother," Ron said, wondering just how deep this leak went, anyway, because _Merlin,_ he was about to lose his wand in it. "I have aa lingering injury. So I couldn't, so I didn't."

He felt Malfoy's pale eyes on the back of his neck and sweeping along the length of his body, making him suddenly painfully self-conscious. He concentrated on probing the crack as deeply as he daredand no, there wasn't water seeping from it, but he thought he sensed a breath of...wind? He pushed deeply, nose to the slimy stone, as the silence spun out further and finer and tighter until

"Weasley," Malfoy said, long and languid, "I admit that our dazzling return to Hogwarts was slightly confusing, what with the Death Eaters and the explosions and the disguises and the various people switching sides all willy-nilly. And I admit I spent a large part of the proceedings unconscious. But I don't remember seeing you hurt, and you don't look particularly impaired now, so I hope you'll understand if I find it somehow hard to believe that you really couldn't have gone off and become an Auror just like your dear friend Potty."

"It's not exactly visible," Ron growled, "and it happened after MacNair blew open the Great Hall."

"Yet you've got all sensory organs more or less accounted for, all your fingers, your arms seem to work well enough, I haven't detected a limp"

"That's 'cause it's been getting better."

"Plenty of rest and butterbeer sorting it out properly, then?"

"It's none or your bloody business where the bastard hexed me, so just drop it!"

"Oh, so it is a hex!" Malfoy sat on the basement steps with the mop spread across his knees. "And here I was thinking it was more of awhat's the word I want?mental difficulty."

Ron glared over his shoulder. "I'm not mad, Malfoy, and if you want my help with your bloody pizzeria you'll shut your mouth."

"I'm just curious, Weasley."

"Remember what happened to the cat?"

Malfoy crossed right over to invade Ron's personal space, dropping the mop to their feet. "Where is it?"

"The cat? It's a bloody metaphor"

"No, you homunculus, the hex mark. Where is it?"

"I'm not telling you!"

"Come on. Between friends. Well, colleagues. Well, people who work together without physical violence."

"Oh you don't think there's going to be physical violence here?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "You're not that plebian, Weasley. Now, where is it?"

"I," Ron said. "Am. Not. Telling. You."

"You do remember I was a spy, right? I _can_ keep a secret."

"That's got nothing to do with it!"

"What has, then?"

"I don't _like_ you!"

"Well, I don't like you either, and I told you about the List! Now where is it?"

Ron pressed his face resolutely into the crack in the wall, which was now about a foot wide, and definitely letting a mere breath of a breeze. "Busy, Malfoy," he snapped. "Like you should be."

Malfoy poked him in the arm. "Where'd you get hexed?"

"Shut up."

Poke. "Where'd you get hexed?"

"Shut _up."_

"Where'd you get"

_"MY ARSE!"_ Ron bellowed, turning to face him. _"IN MY ARSE! ARSE, ARSE, ARSE! IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT?"_

Malfoy was briefly taken aback by the ferocity of Ron's reply, but his expression quickly melted from alarm to incredulity. Snorting weakly, he pressed one hand over his mouth, surely to contain an incipient outburst of laughter.

From above, Zabini called out weakly, "You know, I'm still up here, and I can hear you."

"YOU PISS THE HELL OFF AS WELL!" Ron screamed, shoving his wand back in his pocket. Let them have their leaky, windy cellar and their nasty, filthy pizzeria. He was through here. He'd just go back to the Burrow and wait for the fabulous job opportunities that were sure to start rolling in any day now, and in the mean time, the bloody chickens were going to _get_ it. He spun towards the stairs and got his feet hopelessly tangled in the mop left to lie on the floor.

Malfoy, at that moment, sputtered helplessly and fell against the wall, clutching his stomach.

The wall, at that moment, gave way.

Malfoy flung his arms forward, but there was nothing to grab onto; nothing but Ron, that is, who on pure reflex grabbed Malfoy's sleeve on his own way down. They landed together in a heap, Ron knocking his elbow sharply on the floor, Malfoy shrieking like a girl. He scrambled away from the wall and ended up sticking a fist in Ron's solar plexus, forcing all the air out of him. "What the hell was that?" he yelped.

Ron offered another two-fingered salute.

"Oh, I'm _sorry,_ forgive me for trying to escape from the wall that just _tried to eat me!"_

Ignoring him, Ron crawled forward, peering through the now-sizable hole in the masonry. Stinking damp air, surprisingly cold, buffeted his face, and when he angled his lit wand outward he saw parallel lines of rusty iron running along a crumbling brick shaft that curved away in either direction. "Underground," he croaked when he'd got his wind back. "Looks like we're almost on top of an abandoned tunnel."

Malfoy leaned over him and made a face. "Well, that's...special. I suppose it might conceivably make a good escape route in an emergency, though."

"Like how I'm about to strangle you if you don't get the hell off me?"

Malfoy stood, and brushed the brick dust from his robes. After a moment, he offered Ron a hand. Ron ignored it. "Er," Malfoy said. "Thank you for not letting the wall eat me?"

Ron grunted at him, and gathered the mop and bucket.

"I...apologize for laughing at your doubtlessly traumatic injury, even if it is thoroughly ridiculous."

Ron began to mount the cellar stairs.

"You know, now that you mention it, there is something rather peculiar about your gait"

"Malfoy," Ron said, "please stop talking."

Malfoy folded his arms. "Well, if you're going to be like that, it's no wonder I don't apologize more often."

Halfway up the stairs, Ron paused. "Malfoy, am I on your list?"

"Yes," he said promptly. Then, after a moment, "But not very high."

"No?"

"Not at all. You may get off with a sound mocking."

Ron snorted, and climbed upstairs.

He left the mop and bucket, the books and supplies, everything, with Zabini that day, and despite his dusty, smelly clothes he walked out the dusty front door into sunshine. It occurred to him for the first time that he'd never bothered to notice where the pizzeria was actually locatedhe'd been Flooing or Apparating in every morning. He found himself standing on a quiet cul-de-sac bulging off the side of Diagon Alley, where the slumped and shabby pizzeria was not the most dilapidated of buildings. The access from the main street was very narrow and poorly marked, and Ron vaguely wondered how Malfoy and Zabini ever thought to attract customers.

He strolled, somewhat aimlessly, onto Diagon Alley, with a vague idea of doing some shoppinghe couldn't quite remember the last time he'd been here, but he also couldn't think of anything he particularly needed, except perhaps for a drink. Then again, he wasn't sure there was enough alcohol in the world to make dealing with Malfoy any easier. He'd been insulted, infuriated and now humiliated by the little ferret, and gained nothing from it, except perhaps a few bruises and a fetching new body odor. He could take his frustration out on the chickens back at the Burrow, but that still didn't solve the fundamental problem of Malfoy's...Malfoyness. And he wasn't going to get away from that if he kept going to the bloody proto-pizzeria...

"Oi! Ronald!"

Ron was used to being hailed in stereo, but he still started; he hadn't realized he'd wandered this close to the twins' shop. He realized he'd walked past it, actually, and they were standing on the front step in their dragonhide jackets, wearing exaggerated cross faces. "Er, hello," Ron said. "Sorry. Wasn't paying attention."

"Looked like you were lost in thought there, brother," George said.

"'Cept," Fred added, "you don't normally have enough thoughts to get lost in."

"You also smell," George added, "like a sewer."

Ron looked at himself and grimaced. "Yeah, I've been, erm, busy. With stuff."

"Still chipping away at Mum's list?" Fred asked sympathetically.

"Yeah," Ron said, and waved one hand vaguely, a sort of _what can you do?_ gesture. At least, he hoped it was that sort of gesture. "I was just heading home, actually. Chickens."

The twins shuddered in unison, remembering chicken-related housework all too well themselves. "Better you than us, brother," Fred murmured.

"You should stop by when you're done and, you know, not disgusting anymore," George added. "We've hardly seen you all summer."

Ron shrugged. "Maybe. I sort of have to finish up what I'm working on now."

Fred grinned. "Bloody work ethic. Gets you every time, doesn't it?"

"We'd let you use our Floo," George said, "but I think it might traumatize the customers."

"Also," said Fred, "you smell bad."

"Thanks," Ron said with an eye roll. "See you around, eh?"

"Just try to keep hiding from us!"

He realized as he Disapparated that he'd hit on the crux of the problem. He could quit going to the pizzeria and save himself a load of frustration, but that'd be backing out of his deal with Malfoy. It just didn't seem very Gryffindor to leave the two of them to fumble along by themselves, when they weren't even making any money yet. (Not that Malfoy needed the money, but it was entirely the _principle_ of the thing.) No, Ron had to finish what he'd started, at least until Malfoy and Zabini were more or less underway. It was only fair.

He'd see this business through, even if it killed them.


	4. Chapter 4

Ron dragged himself back to the shop on Saturday, but not right away; he spent a leisurely morning sleeping in, drinking tea, and feeding the chickens (who did not show gratitude; they'd regret that when the henhouse came down). When he did decide to wander over to the pizzeria, it was approaching noon, and he Apparated to the mouth of the cul-de-sac instead of directly inside.

He noticed as he approached that the windows of the pizzeria had been washed, though not well, and a sign had been hung over the door proclaiming the establishment _Zabini's._ When he stepped inside, he discovered that the dining roomwhich they had already mopped, swept and repaintedhad now been furnished, too, with several small tables and matching spindly chairs. It was difficult to believe that they'd so completely transformed the grubby little shop in so little time, and for a moment Ron felt a sort of warm, tight feeling deep in his chest...

"Weasley!" Malfoy barked from somewhere in the depths of the kitchen. "Get back here!"

...a feeling which was probably heartburn.

Malfoy was perched on a countertop in the back of the kitchen, and if he had any lingering regrets over their row the day before, he showed no sign of it. Ron had to navigate around boxes and crates stamped with Italian wordsmore new additionsand Malfoy snapped at him imperiously. "Come on, come on, not all of us can afford to lay about until mid-afternoon. In fact, I'm not certain how you can afford it, though I suppose if necessary you can subsist on nuts and berries."

"Hello to you too, Malfoy," Ron said. "What's the emergency?"

Zabini suddenly popped up from behind the counter and prodded Malfoy in the back with a wooden spoon. He was wearing an apron already spotted with flour and tomato products. "Off," he snapped. "I don't know where that arse has been."

"Oh, shut up," Malfoy said, but he slid off the countertop and settled instead on one of the crates. "Weasley, be useful and put all this in the cellar. I'm likely to break my neck trying and then the entire venture will be ruined."

"Put it down there yourself," Ron suggested, prodding the open lid of one of the crates. Inside, nestled carefully in straw, were about a dozen large bottles of green-golden olive oil. "You planning to make the Welcoming Feast when Hogwarts re-opens?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes dramatically. "It's called inventory, you ignorant _mmrph!"_ Zabini had returned to the edge of the counter and shoved a breadstick into Malfoy's mouth, a fat golden breadstick gleaming with butter or oil and liberally flecked with herbs. Malfoy bit off the end, munched for a moment, then shrugged. "Not bad. Might need more salt."

"You think everything needs salt. I'm astonished you're not already hypertensive." Zabini took the slightly squashed breadstick from Malfoy and thrust it at Ron. "You. You try it."

Ron took it, examined it, and then nibbled off the end Malfoy hadn't bitten. The outside was pleasantly crusty without being hard, and the inside was soft and slightly sweet, still oven-warm and redolent with musky oregano and bright basil. "'S good," he said, and took a slightly larger bite. "Really good, even."

"I suppose that's the best you're capable of," Blaise said, and bustled out of sight again.

"You obviously have no palate to speak of," Malfoy muttered. "Now take the lot of it downstairs."

"Make me."

They ended up splitting the work, stacking the goods in the cellar, away from the boarded-over hole that lead into the Tube shaft and clear of the few lingering leaks. It had aired out nicely overnight, so Ron supposed the food wouldn't be in danger of spoiling. By the time they came up for the last trip, Blaise had laid another creation on the counter: a long, thin pan of bread, piled with red sauce and warm, greasy cheese. Blaise was just sprinkling it with shredded basil leaves when they emerged from the cellar. "Eat this," he snapped at them.

Malfoy looked dubious, but Ron gamely accepted a slice. "What is it?" he asked, examining the melted cheese that drooped from the edge.

_"Pizza Margherita,"_ Blaise said, and Ron decided to pretend this meant something. Blaise had a streak of flour high on one cheek, and it gave him a slightly crazed look, accentuated by the tilt of his head and the tight fold of his arms across the stained apron.

Malfoy snatched a piece as soon as Blaise cut it and took a bite. "Acceptable," he said when he'd swallowed. "A bit too oily, though, and the sauce is terribly acidic."

"Good thing I don't care what you think, then," Blaise said, and thrust a piece still trailing strings of melted cheese at Ron.

_Pizza Margherita_ turned out to be delicious. So did the next two pizzas Blaise hauled out of the oven, one topped with pepperoni and one with pineapple and ham, thought Malfoy still found grounds to criticize the former and refused to even touch the latter, calling it "an abomination against all good taste and reasonable gastronomy." Blaise tried to throw a piece at him for that, but Malfoy dodged it with a Seeker's reflexes and it splattered on the floor.

"Clean that up, Weasley," Malfoy said from behind the rubbish bin. "And then get over here, I need to talk to you."

Ron did clean it up, but then he finished putting the ingredients in the cellar, and after that he sat in the kitchen for a while (Blaise didn't seem to mind having _his_ arse on the counters) and watched a fourth pizzasausage and olive, apparentlycome together. Only after it was in the oven and Blaise had slumped against the wall with a bottle of sherry did Ron hunker down next to Malfoy. Malfoy was adding something to his List, but he glanced up when Ron's shadow fell across his page. "You know," Ron said, "hiding behind the bin won't actually save you if he starts throwing tomatoes or something."

"He's just highly-strung," Malfoy sniffed. "Most artists are."

"Especially when you call their work 'a crime against nature.'"

"Well, it was. And the fact that you enjoyed it only supports my case."

Ron sighed, and slid down into a seated position. "What'd you want to talk about?"

Malfoy closed his List with a decisive little snap, but dug up another little booklet to take its place. "Advertising," he said. "We need some."

"Well, I don't reckon anyone will just _wander_ in, no."

"When are you free for a photo shoot?"

Ron blinked at him for a minute. "What?"

"A _photo shoot,"_ Malfoy repeated, slowly and with great emphasis. "You know, you stand around and try to look competent while someone shoves a camera in your face?"

"Why would I be at a photo shoot?" Ron asked.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Because we need advertising, Weasley."

Oh. _Oh._ "No way, Malfoy."

"Oh, what _now?"_ Malfoy wailed. "Does it offend your delicate sensibilities? Does it violate the sanctity of your hermitude? Don't think you can get us to match you shot for shot in this, because it would sort of undermine the entire point of advertising if we have to use the slogan _'We're not evil and neither is our pizza!'"_

"I'm not going in any adverts," Ron said flatly, folding his arms. "And that's not up for argument."

"Everything is up for argument," Malfoy said. "Would it help if I promised you free pizza?"

"I just got free pizza," Ron said, "so no, not really."

"What about sex?"

Ron's brain immediately went to work on processing this statement, and thus diverted critical resources away from such functions as breathing and swallowing. He inhaled his own spit, and doubled over coughing even while trying to sort out just what the _hell_ that was supposed to mean.

Malfoy, of course, misinterpreted his reaction entirely. "Oh, come on, Weasley, certainly it's not that horrific of an idea. We're young men, after all, and it's not like you're getting out much."

Ron managed a strangled croak before another bout of coughing overtook him. Since he couldn't protest, he tried to edge away, choking all the while.

Malfoy noticed this, and scowled at him. "Please, you're being ridiculous. It's a natural, healthy act, nothing to be ashamed of, certainly nothing to get worked up about unless you're a virgin." He paused. _"Are_ you a virgin?"

"No!" Ron managed to blurt. "And I'm not having sex with you!"

Malfoy blinked, and his mouth twisted downward in horror. "What in Merlin's name are you talking about, Weasley?"

"You just" Ron coughed one last time. "Didn't you just offer me sex so I'd be in your adverts?"

"I justI didn't mean with _me,_ you imbecile!" Malfoy snapped, getting very pink in the face. "I was offering to find you a willing girl! Or boy, if that's what you wanted, as clearly you _do._ Are you completely delusional or something?"

"I don'tbut you said" Ron took a few deep breaths, then shook his head. "Never mind. Just...let's categorically say that sex is off the table, yes?"

"Fine," Malfoy said very quickly. "No sex and no pizza. What is there that you _would_ like?"

_Privacy_ came to mind, but Ron wasn't certain that was entirely accurate. It wasn't like he was Harry, who'd had to put another Fidelius Charm on the house in Godric's Hallow to keep people from camping out on his lawn. It wasn't so much that he minded a little attentionhe never had, mostlybut sticking his face in an advert for the pizzeria, having his name tied to Zabini's (the wizard or the restaurant) in such a public way...it felt like _committing,_ in a way. It was like announcing to all the world that he, Ronald Billius Weasley, was working at a pizzeria run by spies...which was all at once inaccurate, ridiculous, terrifying and embarrassing. Because, honestly, he was a _war hero_. Selling _pizza._ Had he really sunk that low?

So he told Malfoy, "Privacy," and Malfoy snorted. "I'm serious," he insisted. "I'll keep helping out around here, which probably means I'm insane, but I don't want to draw attention to myself doing it, you know?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Weasley, I _hired_ you to draw attention to yourself. What's the point of having a young, heroic, moderately attractive and not entirely stupid celebrity working here if I can't _flaunt_ it?"

"You didn't hire me," Ron repeated dully, and ignored the descriptive bit because, so soon after the sex conversation, it was a little bit creepy. "And, look, I helped you get the business permit and the lease, and that's what we agreed on originally. And I helped you clean up, but that was a separate thing, 'cause I'm a nice bloke like that, and like I said, probably insane. None of that means I have to be in your adverts!"

"But you're...heroic," Malfoy said again, "and endearing, and reasonably good-looking, and not evil"

"Quite describing me!" Ron snapped. "I'm not doing it. End of story."

"Fine," Malfoy said, drawing his knees up. "Let the restaurant go belly-up. Put Blaise on the street and break his heart. I only stand to lose a few thousand Galleons, it's no skin off my nose..."

Ron shut his eyes for a moment, rallying himself. "I'll put in a word for you with Dean Thomas, okay?" he said. "I think he works for Obscurus now, but I'm sure he'd take a freelance job if you pay him right."

"Yes," said Malfoy, "if I want our logo to be a cartoon lion eating a pizza while Harry Potter descends from on high, distributing puppies and sunshine." But he'd stood up and stopped pouting, so Ron counted that much, at least, as a win.

From the kitchen, Blaise slammed the oven door shut. "Weasley, come eat this!"

In the end, Dean did do the adverts (thanks to some fast talking and the odd outright lie) and there were no lions or Harrys or puppies. There were no Malfoys or Blaises either; instead, on the right side of the handbill was a photograph of Blaise's grandmother, captioned "Nona Zabini." She had a soft, drooping face and apple cheeks, fuzzy white hair and a toothless smile, and was in all other respects Ron's ideal image of a friendly Italian grandmother. On the left side of the handbill, captioned merely "Mama," was Blaise's mum. In the photographs, she was wearing a white lacy bit of something and lay sprawled on a white velvet couch like a streak of calligraphy; every time Ron looked at the picture, she waggled her eyebrows at him suggestively. (Blaise swore up and down that it was the best picture he had of her, and anyway what was wrong with it?) The slogan was simply _Authentic Italian Dining_ and the street address was misspelled, which gave Malfoy fits. He still ordered a thousand.

Ron grudgingly helped post the handbills all over Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley, stuffed them in newspapers and even suffered through a mass owling. (The professional post owls made the chickens at the Burrow look positively friendly.) He fetched and carried, helped repair a temperamental oven, and sampled twelve different varieties of pizza, along with salads, breadsticks, pasta dishes, and something called tiramisu that left him tipsy the rest of the afternoon while Blaise muttered about Nona's handwriting and the differences between teaspoons and cups. Ron sometimes hung about doing nothing except listening to Malfoy bitch and moan about something and scribble in one of several little black notebooksthe List, of course, but also one or two others that Malfoy wouldn't admit to. Ron stayed home one day and tried to catch up on the WWN soaps, but Malfoy Flooed him late in the afternoon and complained so loudly and at length that Ron went into the pizzeria just to shut him up.

And then, with the indignity of the owling still fresh in their minds, they had a customer.

Ron was in the back at the time with Blaise, partly taste-testing a new vinaigrette and partly helping to knead a ball of pizza dough. He'd helped his mum make bread before, after all, and this really wasn't any different. Also Blaise didn't talk to him, unlike Malfoy, whose latest obsession seemed to be Fascinating Facts About the Restaurant's Expenses, such as, "Do you know how much we're spending on mozzarella?" and "Don't eat that, it costs more than your clothes." Blaise just kept his nose in Nona's recipe book and occasionally muttered to himself in Italian as he chopped, mixed and measured.

Ron was just getting to where he could enjoy the steady rhythm of the dough hitting the table when he heard, for the first time, the bell on the front door ring. He looked at Blaise. Blaise looked at him. Malfoy came barreling out of the cellar, where he'd been doing Merlin-knew-what. "Idiots!" he hissed. "Serve the customer!"

"How?" Ron mouthed at him.

Malfoy grimaced at them both and then went around to the front counter, where he had recently installed a large, noisy cash register with a distinct perverse streak. "Good afternoon," they heard him say loudly. "Welcome to Zabini's, madam. How may we help you?"

And then Ron's heart fell into his stomach when he heard a familiar French-accented lilt. "'Allo. Ah, I do not know whezzer I should sit or stand..."

"In Zabini's, you may do whatever you like," Malfoy said. The cheery brightness in his voice made Ron clench his teeth, but he didn't dare do anything, not when the pizzeria had its very first customerand certainly not when that customer was his own sister-in-law. He wondered if he could get away with hiding in the cellar until she had gone.

"Zen I will stand," Fleur declared haughtily. "Is it true, zat you have authentic Italian food?"

"Only the most authentic Italian food in London!" Malfoy assured her.

"'Ave you got a menu I may see?"

Ron didn't think they had, but Malfoy must've produced one, because there was nothing but silence from the front for a few long moments. Ron toyed with the ball of dough without really kneading it, and Blaise kept stirring some kind of sauce despite the fact the burner wasn't lit.

"Excuse me," Fleur finally said, "but it seems to me zat all you 'ave is pizza."

"Well, yes, that's all that's on the menu," Malfoy said, and his artificial good cheer was distinctly deflated. "Our head chef is in, though, so I'm certain he could whip up whatever you desired in a moment's notice if you just"

"And I do not believe," Fleur continued coolly, "zat pineapple and 'am is an authentic Italian pizza."

"Probably not," Malfoy said, "but I'm not sure you're an authentic blonde, so what does it matter?"

Blaise flinched, and for a moment Ron was frozen between two powerful and equally unwise urges. Fleur's indignant shriek cut through the indecision, though; he gave his hands a perfunctory wipe on his apron and charged out to the front counter just as Malfoy was beginning to stammer a retraction.

"Malfoy, just shut the hell up!" he called, vaulting over the edge of the counter. "Fleurerhi. Want a pizza?"

Fleur stared and Malfoy glared. "Ron? Is zat really you?"

"No," Malfoy said, "it's"

Ron never found out what he was going to say, because he shoved the towel that had been tucked into his apron pocket in Malfoy's mouth and shoved him towards the back. Let Zabini deal with him. "Yeah, it's me," Ron said. "Let's, er, you wanna stand outside for a bit?"

"Are you working with zat 'orrible little man?" Fleur asked, eying the apron.

"No," Ron said, trying to herd her towards the door without transferring any flour from himself to her impeccable blue robes. "Well, sort of. It's complicated."

"Weasley," Malfoy growled with lint on his lips, "I hope you know this is going on my List."

"Don't listen to him," Ron told Fleur. "He'serin the war, his head, you knowhe talks nonsense all the time, doesn't even realize. Is it hot in here? I'm hot. Let's go outside and get some air."

Fleur narrowed her eyes at Malfoy, though, and leaned away from Ron's arm. "I know him," she murmured.

"No, you don't," Ron said, and all but shoved her out the pizzeria doors.

In the street, she smoothed her robes out and gave him a sour, haughty look. "Ronald, what is going on in zere? Isn't' zat 'orrible little boy Draco Malfoy?"

"No," Ron said. "Well, sort of."

"Sort of"

"It's complicated." He took a deep breath. "He, er, that is, yes. It's Malfoy. The Malfoy. The one, you know, our Malfoy."

"Ze one who tripped you?"

"Right, him." The one who was now pacing back and forth inside the restaurant, scowling through the windows at them. "And I...am helping him out, a bit, on account of how he's insane and such. Because he tripped me, and that did save my life, and he...he hasn't got any money and if this restaurant fails he'll have to, um, live on the street. In Brazil."

Fleur watched him carefully, and Ron felt his ears turn bright red. "Brazil?"

"Like I said, it's complicated."

"I thought," she said slowly, with a carefully enunciated th, "zat you were waiting to hear back from ze Aurors, no?"

"I am," Ron said quickly, "I mean, I still I am. This is...this is nothing, it's a lark, it's a favor to BlaiseZabinithe Zabini, you know, the one who"

"I know, yes," Fleur said, and tossed her hair. "'E was ze only person at 'Ogwarts almost as pretty as me."

Ron blinked at her, shook his head, and then focused on the task at hand. "Right. Of course. Well, you see then, he needs help managing Malfoy, who's mad, I told you Malfoy's mad, right? So I've just been helping out. So they don't have to go to Brazil. It's no big deal. Just...getting them on their feet, you know?"

"I believe so," she said, and Ron let out a tiny sigh of relief. "And it is very kind of you to help madmen, even one so foul as zat Malfoy."

"Yeah, I'm a regular saint," Ron muttered.

She brushed a bit of flour off her robes and fiddled with something in her pocketbook. "Bill will be so surprised to 'ear about zis"

"No," Ron blurted. She blinked at him. "Er. Don't tell Bill? Please?"

"Why not?"

Ron wasn't sure he'd ever lied this much in such a small span of time, much less gotten away with it, and he felt his palms start to sweat. "Well, 'cause BillI mean, Malfoy's kind of the reason, you know, his face, and I don't think he'd be very keen on my helping here, you know, might still be nursing a grudge. You don't still have a grudge, do you?"

"I am above such pettiness," Fleur said.

"Good," Ron said. "And, er, how about I get you a free pizza? So there's no hard feelings."

This was how their first-ever sale went. Ron wrapped the pizza while Blaise shouted at Malfoy for insulting customers, and then Ron shouted at Malfoy for insulting his family while Blaise took out his frustrations on another ball of dough. Then Malfoy shouted at both of them for giving away free food, lectured for an hour and a half on What I Am Paying Just For Cheese, and hid himself away in the cellar for over three hours. They didn't get any more customers that day.

_At least,_ Ron told himself when he Apparated home that night, _at least it can't get much worse than this._


	5. Chapter 5

Thankfully for all of them, Fleur was just the first customer, not the last. Blaise tried to categorically ban Malfoy from dealing with the public, but that didn't last long; there was no one else to do the cooking, and Ron wasn't going to stand at the register for hours at a time even if he weren't paranoid about being recognized. "Just try not to insult them, or abuse them, or curse them," Blaise said, feverishly chopping a large slab of pancetta. "You can do that, can't you, Draco?"

"Of course I can. I am a saint," Malfoy said, and stole a nip of cooking sherry.

"Leave off, that's imported," Blaise said severely.

Malfoy shrugged. "What? It's my gold I'm drinking."

Ron snorted at him. "Weren't you the one sniping at us about our expenses yesterday?"

"I was just reminding you to be frugal with the inventory."

"You scolded us for tossing out olive pits."

Malfoy waved him away. "Waste not, want not, isn't that how it goes? You of all people should know that, Weasley." He reached for the sherry again; Blaise slipped him the balsamic vinegar instead.

The number of customers they got each day rose slowly but steadily, and Malfoy badgered Ron into installing a large glass display case in the front counter for showing off the fresh pizzas. Blaise kept experimenting with different dishes, but Ron noticed that he seemed to be cooking with an awful lot of wine. They began to stay later and later in the evening, doing dishes until midnight, wrestling with the temperamental cash register until one o'clock; Ron snacked on odds and ends of pizza and pasta throughout the day, and his mum's careful stockpile of casseroles stayed untouched in the back of the cold cupboard. He was surprised when he stumbled home in the small hours of one morning and found Errol passed out on the front stoop, clutching a letter from his parents with more blurry photographs and a reminder that they'd be back in a couple of weeks. The letter was dated August 14; Ron had to carefully consult a calendar and his memory to determine that the current date was August 17.

Two and a half weeks of working with Malfoy and Blaise, and they hadn't murdered each other yet. Wasn't the whole thing supposed to be a lark?

He meditated on this as he walked to the pizzeria the next day; he'd found that, as long as he didn't shave (no matter what Malfoy said about his beard) most people were fairly slow to recognize him, if they recognized him at all. It allowed him to walk along Diagon Alley in the mornings and enjoy the summer weather, at least as far as the sticky, smoggy summer weather was enjoyable. Two and a half weeks since Malfoy had stuck his foot in the Burrow's doorthey'd said then he'd be free to walk away, just shake a few hands and look heroic. Right. If he tried to walk away now, Malfoy would throw the mother of all temper tantrums, to start with, and then he'd Floo or owl every hour on the hour until Ron either came back to the restaurant or killed him. There were only the three of them, after all, to keep the place running all day, every day, and Ron suspected that without him, Blaise wouldn't even take time to go to the toilet.

The image of Blaise strapping an empty bottle to his leg to avoid bathroom breaks made Ron snicker as he walked in the front entrance of the restaurant. The snicker died in his throat when he saw a spotty teenager standing at the cash register. "Er, hello?" he said.

The kid grinned widely, eyes popping. "WelcometoZabini'showmayIhelpyou?"

"What?"

Malfoy emerged from the back and clapped the boy on the shoulder. "Good work, Dennis, just try to slow down a bit on the delivery, eh? Oh, and you don't have to be nice to Weasley, he works here."

"Really?" Dennis turned to Ron and smiled widely. "Wow! That's brilliant! Hi, Mr. Weasley!"

"Er. Hi." Ron waved weakly at him as he came around the counter. "Malfoy, what's going on?"

Malfoy grinned at him. "Meet our newest employee, Weasley. You probably know of himDennis Creevey, aged sixteen."

Now that Malfoy said it, Ron did recognize Dennis, though the last time they'd seen each other, Ron remembered him being about waist-high, and sort of squeaky. Now he came up to Ron's shoulder and his voice broke on every other syllable. "I failed all my OWLS!" Dennis announced excitedly. "That's why I'm working here! Colin said it was either find myself a wizard job or help Dad with the milk route, and I'm lactose intolerant!"

"That's...nice, Dennis," Ron said. "You keep at it. Malfoy, can we talk in the back?"

"Of course, Weasley. Dennis, you can handle the register by yourself, can't you?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Malfoy!" Dennis said. Behind him, the register growled quietly.

They went into the kitchen, where Blaise was apparently beating a good-sized octopus with a rock. Without asking questions, or in any other way drawing attention to themselves, they retreated to the cellar. "Why'd you hire Dennis?" Ron asked once he was certain he wouldn't interrupt Blaise.

"We need the extra help," Malfoy said casually. "I can't manage the register by myself _and_ do the books _and_ all the other administrative tasks, Blaise is busy cooking, and you hide."

"I do not hide," Ron said.

"There's no need to get defensive, Weasley. You made your reclusive nature perfectly clear when we were discussing the adverts."

"I'm not _reclusive!"_ Ron snapped. "What's wrong with wanting to have some privacy?"

"'A grave's a fine and private place,'" Malfoy said, "'but none, I think, there do embrace.'"

"What?"

"Nothing," he said quickly, "never mind."

"Did you just threaten me?" Ron asked.

"No."

"Did you just _flirt_ with me?"

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Then what the hell was that about?"

Malfoy opened his mouth, paused, and was rudely interrupted by a screech from upstairs. Ron charged up, leaped over the rubbish bin, and found Dennis standing before the cash register, clutching one hand to his chest. An elderly warlock clutching a paper-wrapped slice of pizza was looking at the register with a deep sense of mistrust, and Blaise was standing over it, poised to beat it with his rock. "What's going on?" Ron asked. "What happened?"

"It bit me," Dennis said, pointing at the register.

Malfoy, from behind Ron, rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."

"It did!"

"I saw it," the warlock said querulously.

"It doesn't have _teeth,"_ Malfoy pointed out.

"The drawer," Dennis said, "it tried to close on my fingers."

Malfoy sniffed. "You're delusional."

"I've never trusted that thing," Blaise said, still hefting the rock. "It's got aa look to it."

"Yes," Malfoy said, "despite the fact that it _doesn't have a face."_

Ron prodded the register with his wand, and it shuddered; Blaise hit it with the rock, and then with the octopus for good measure. "Malfoy, where did you get this thing?"

"Oh, you know, I was just out and about and I don't think I precisely remember and oh, look at the time!" He scuttled back towards the cellar. "Things to do, candidates to review, that sort of thing!"

"Candidates?" Ron called after him. "What d'you mean, candidates?" When Malfoy ignored him, he looked at Blaise. "Is he hiring more people?"

"I don't know," Blaise said ferociously. "I don't know and I don't care." He stalked back into the kitchen, the octopus trailing from one hand.

"What's he doing in the cellar?" Ron shouted, but Blaise ignored him. The sound of vigorous chopping filled the entire shop. Ron turned to Dennis. "Do you know what he's doing in the cellar?"

"I've only been here for three hours, Mr. Weasley," Dennis said.

"Fine," Ron said, sighing. "Okay. Don't let the register push you around, okay?"

"Yessir, Mr. Weasley!"

What Malfoy was doing in the cellar, apparently, was reading resumes; in the mid-afternoon, a warlock with a beard that fell to his feet appeared and wandered around the restaurant for half and hour before Malfoy came upstairs and led him to the register by the arm. "Everyone, I'd like you to meet Archie," he said warmly. "He's our _new_ newest employee."

"Nice to meet you, Archie," Ron said, wondering if Archie could even see through the plate-thick glasses he wore.

"Hello, Archie!" Dennis said brightly.

Blaise swore loudly in the kitchen.

Archie waved vaguely at a wall, presumably encompassing all of them, and stumbled forward when Malfoy clapped him on the shoulder. "There you are, Archie. Good man. Dennis, go away, Archie's taking the rest of the night."

While Dennis tried to introduce Archie to the cash register (it definitely rattled at him), Ron followed Malfoy down the cellar stairs. He had covered two crates of tinned olives in a tablecloth and put a nameplate on it, and he sat behind this "desk" while Ron asked, "Malfoy, why the hell did you hire that old codger?"

"Because we need the assistance," he said slowly. "And frankly, he was the best of a bad lot. Also willing to accept our pay scale."

"What are you paying them?" Ron asked suspiciously.

"Why, planning to ask for a raise?"

"You don't pay me _anything,_ Malfoy."

"I let you eat pizza, don't I?" Malfoy snapped open one of his little black bookspossibly the List, possibly notand started making furious notes. "Now, keep an eye on Archie, will you? I'm worried he might forget where he is and what he's selling."

Ron couldn't think of any way to answer that, so he stomped upstairs and made Archie watch him work the till for three hours. Around the end of hour three, he dozed off, and Ron was left with the register and his own thoughts. There was nothing wrong with Malfoy hiring more employeesrandom, sure, but not wrongbut couldn't he find anyone better than Dennis and Archie? They were likely to make _more_ work, not less, and while it would serve Malfoy right to find that out the hard way, the honorable part of Ron that made him keep coming to the restaurant in the first place insisted he couldn't just leave the idiot hanging

He rang up two calzone and a butterbeer for a pinched-looked witch, and the register definitely spit a Knut at him. Even Archie woke up. _One more thing Malfoy needs saving from,_ Ron thought, and then wondered what the hell he meant by that.

That night, Ron spent several hours poking, prodding and manhandling the cash register, but it gave up no secrets, and none of the general counter-curses had a noticeable effect. He thought he saw the drawer twitch when he tried a straightforward _finite incatatum_, but his eyes might've been playing tricks on him from fatigue. He gave it up as a bad job, but promised himself he'd have a look at some of his dad's books in the morning, to see if they gave him any ideas. A possessed cash register was the least of the pizzeria's problems, but it was at least one that he could deal with, as opposed to, say, Malfoy. (Well, he supposed he could deal with Malfoy, but he was sort of opposed to murder.)

When he finished with the register, he looked about and realized exactly how late it had gotten; he also realized that a light was still burning in the rear of the kitchen. Perhaps Blaise had forgotten to shut a light off when he left for the night? Ron stretched his back and headed into the kitchen, just to check, because the very last thing they needed was a fire cause by a stray candle falling to the ground.

As it turned out, he needn't had worried, because Blaise was still there. Blaise was, in fact, sprawled on the floor of the cold cupboard, a bottle of wine in one hand and a head of garlic in the other. He was still wearing his food-splattered apron, but he seemed to have misplaced his trousers. "Blaise?" Ron called, hoping like hell he hadn't died, or been assaulted by an octopus, or something.

Blaise looked up at Ron, or at least pointed his face in the right direction. "Oh, hello, Weasley," he said. "What are you up to?"

"I was about to ask you that, actually," Ron said. He knelt next to Blaise's head and eyed the wine bottle. "Is this the only one you've been into?"

"Erm...no?"

"Bloody hell." Ron tried to get his hands under Blaise's shoulders. "Come on, up with you."

"No no no..." Blaise curled into a ball around his bottle, and almost as an afterthought, he bit into the head of garlic. "Don't want to go."

"You're going to get sick, Zabini."

"I don't care."

"At least get out of the cold cupboard?"

Blaise snorted messily, right in Ron's face, surrounding him with a miasma of garlic and wine. "No, leave me here. Just leave me. It's my tomb."

_"What?"_ Ron looked him over again, but he didn't seem to be injured in any way.

"You'll bury me here," Blaise insisted morosely. "One day. Mark my words, I'm going to die in this kitchen, Weasley, and you lot'll stow my body here and keep making pizza."

Ron blinked at him. _"What?_ Youthat's disgusting, Zabini. And morbid. C'mon, get up."

He tried to lift Blaise by the shoulders again, but Blaise just went limp and heavy and cuddled his garlic. Ron ended up dragging him out by the ankles and depositing him in the middle of the kitchen floor. He wrested the wine bottle away, but didn't feel quite up to fighting for a half-eaten head of garlic. "Thank you, Weasley," Blaise said heavily, and pawed at Ron's shirt. "Weasley. Ron. You're a good person."

"Thanks," Ron said.

"You won't let Draco put in the cupboard when I die, will you?"

"Blaise, you're not going to die in the kitchen," Ron said.

"I am," he moaned. "You don't understand."

"Wanna explain it?" Ron asked. Anything to get him off the floor.

Blaise sighed again, releasing another plume of fumes. "All I do anymore is cook," he said mournfully. "I wake up in the morning, I cook, I go to bed at night. I haven't spoken to anyone but you and Draco in weeks and I smell like garlic and onions all the time."

Ron eyed the head of garlic in Blaise's hand. "Really? That's...weird."

Oblivious, Blaise bit off more garlic. "I had a dream," he said as he chewed, "that I was making love to a beautiful woman."

"I don't think I need to hear"

_"Listen to me,"_ Blaise said fiercely, and propped himself up on his elbows. "I was making love to a woman. A soft, warm, beautiful woman with great, big, beautiful breasts. A man could die in those breasts and be contented. And she was mine."

He trailed off for a moment, and as much as Ron would've loved to stop the conversation right there, he didn't think he was going to get Blaise off the floor until he'd work this out of his system. "Was she good?" he made himself mumble.

"Fantastic," Blaise sighed. "Perfect. But do you know what happened?"

"No," Ron said, and thought, _please don't tell me._

Blaise told him. "At the moment of completion, the moment of climax, the peakI thought to myself, _in the middle of a sex dream,_ 'More parsley.'"

Ron blinked. "More parsley?"

"More parsley," Blaise said mournfully, and flopped back onto the floor. Almost as an afterthought, he took another bite of the garlic.

Ron rubbed his face for a moment. "Okay," he said, "so maybe you've been working too hard"

"I'm a healthy, attractive, sexually experienced man in my prime," Blaise said, chewing, "and all I can think of is cooking. All I _do_ is cook. And for what? Nothing."

"Not nothing," Ron said quickly. "The shop's doing really well, isn't it?"

"Still not turning a profit," Blaise said heavily. "Malfoy says we aren't even close to breaking even."

Ron hadn't known that, and it made the sudden hiring spree all the more bizarre. Blaise wasn't exactly in a state of mind for an in-depth discussion of the restaurant's finances, though. "It's getting better, though, isn't it?" Ron asked. "I mean, look, you've only been open for a couple of weeks. You can't judge the whole restaurant by a couple of weeks."

"I know," Blaise sighed. (Ron covered his face with his sleeve in self-defense.) "I just...this isn't where I ever thought I'd be, you know?"

Ron tried to force a smile. "We're a bit young to start having crises, aren't we?"

"We're all older than we look," Blaise said. "And I've had my whole future planned out since I was seven."

"Oh?"

"Yes," Blaise said. "By now I planned to be safely entangled with the first in a series of wealthy, elderly widows who would die and leave me their fortunes, or at least allow me to embezzle from them freely."

"...oh."

"It's the family business," he added.

Ron cleared his throat, and found he couldn't look at Blaise in the eye. "Well. I...er...well. It's good to have goals, I guess, but..."

When he couldn't finish the sentence, Blaise prompted him. "But what? What, Weasley? Why aren't I living a life of luxury, fucking an assortment of wealthy widows? Where are the widows, Weasley?"

"Why do there have to be widows?" Ron blurted. "Who said you have to stick with whatever you decided to do when you were seven? I mean, did you even understand how sex worked when you were seven?"

"Of course," Blaise said. "My mother was very progressive."

"The point _is,"_ Ron said, because he had a feeling if he let himself get sidetracked now he'd lose whatever it was he was trying to say before he could say it. "The point is, that your goals can change, you know, when your life changes. They have to change, sometimes, and they, they _ought_ to change. 'Cause when you decided to, you know, with the widows, you didn't know there was going to be a war or pizza or any of this stuff. And if you let yourself get hung up on the widows then you'll never even notice what's good about the pizza, right?"

Blaise seemed to think about this for a while. In fact, he seemed to think about it for so long that Ron was afraid he'd passed out. When he finally said, "That was almost profound, you know?" Ron nearly leapt out of his skin.

"Thanks," he said. "I, um, yeah. Thanks."

Blaise, as if with tremendous effort, pushed himself into a sitting position. He looked at the half-eaten head of garlic in his hand as if he'd never noticed it before, then offered it to Ron. Ron took it, and put it on a counter. "Weasley," he said earnestly, "Ron. You're a good person, you know that?"

"Thank you, Blaise."

"If I die in the kitchen, you won't let Draco put me in the cupboard, will you?"

Ron sighed. "No, Blaise. But you're not going to die in the kitchen."

"What about the cellar?"

Ron grabbed Blaise's wrist and managed to coax him to his feet. "I reckon you need to go to bed, mate."

"If I die, Draco will hide me in the cellar," Blaise insisted. "Don't let him."

"If you die, Zabini, I will personally oversee your burial," Ron said. "But right now, you are alive, and you need to go home."

Blaise tried to snort, and instead splattered Ron with garlic-scented spit. "No point," he said. "I'll just dream about widows, and then I'll have to come back here in the morning, and there will still be pizza. Always gonna be pizza." He smothered a very small burp.

Ron had made many foolish decisions in his lifetime, brief though it was. He thought with his heart too often and his head too rarely, and he acted on instinct, in the heat of the moment. He knew all of thisHermione had wailed about it so often he couldn't _not_ know. And yet, unsurprisingly, he kept on doing it. He was a victim of irony like that.

So he said, "Take a day off, why don't you?" And when Blaise twisted his head around to stare, Ron continued, "I mean it. Take tomorrow off. Get some sleep. Find yourself a widow, even. It'll be good for you."

"Malfoy won't let me," Blaise said. "He'll pitch a fit."

"Leave Malfoy to me," Ron said, braver than he felt.

"Who's going to cook?"

Ron lugged Blaise out the back door and around into the street. "We'll work something out," he said. "You need to rest up. Get some perspective." That sounded like something Hermione would say, didn't it?

Blaise didn't answer, except to give directions; he was staying, it seemed, at the Leaky Cauldron. Tom let Ron in and helped him dump Blaise in his room, which was practically bare except for two small pictures of his mum. (Mama Zabini ogled Ron thoroughly while he tucked her son into bed.) He waited around until he was sure Blaise was sound asleep, then slipped downstairs to Floo home.

And it was only when he stood in the Burrow's dark kitchen, looking at the piled of unopened post and unwashed dishes and Errol, who had fallen into the dustbin and fallen asleep thereit was only then that Ron realized exactly what he had committed himself to.

"Oh, bloody _hell."_


	6. Chapter 6

Ron forced himself out of bed early the next day, stared at his desk for only a moment, and headed to the pizzeria. He had a vague idea that he could somehow start cooking ahead of time, and have all the pizzas made early, so they'd just need to pop them in the oven as they needed them. Perhaps if he had all that under control, Malfoy wouldn't scream too terribly much to discover that their headand onlychef was, at the moment, sleeping off some sort of quarter-life crisis, one with no end clearly in sight.

That carefully-constructed contingency plan was blown all to shit when Ron entered the shop through the front, and was almost bowled over by something very small, high-pitched, and wrapped in a tablecloth. Reflexes were reflexes, and he knocked the little thing across the room with a well-placed jinx before he tried to think of what, precisely, it was. "Come out where I can see you," he said loudly, wand trained on the bundle of red-and-white checkered fabric.

The tablecloth shivered a moment, and then a pair of enormous blue eyes became visible in the folds. The eyes were followed by a thin nose, and by the time the big bat-ears cleared the edge of the cloth, Ron had realized what he was looking at. "Please to not be angry with me?" the house-elf whimpered. "I is only coming to see if you is customer, and I trips and falls and rolls and hits you."

Ron scrubbed his face and crouched next to the elf. "Sorry," he said, "but, er, who are you? And how'd you get in here?"

"I is Tiffer!" the elf said. "Master Malfoy is rescuing me and telling me to live here!"

"Merlin on a fucking waffle," Ron muttered. "Malfoy brought you here?"

Tiffer nodded ferociously. "He is saying that here Tiffer can have life of dignity and respect, and a little bed by the oven, and all the scraps I can be eating!"

"That's...fabulous for you, Tiffer," Ron said. "I don't suppose he's paying you, is he?"

Tiffer drew...himself? Herself? Ron wasn't exactly an expert on sexing elvesTiffer drew Tiffer's self up and stuck out Tiffer's chin indignantly. "Certainly not! Tiffer is not that kind of elf!"

"Of course not," Ron said quickly. "I didn't mean to imply. Er, you want some help wrapping that up?"

Tiffer moved, but Ron couldn't tell if he-she-it was standing under all the folds of tablecloth. "Tiffer is not needing help from you! I ought to be giving you help! Does you want a pizza?"

"No, no, Tiffer, mate, I work here," Ron said, and stuck out his hand. "Ron Weasley." Tiffer looked at his hand suspiciously. "C'mon, I'm serious, I work with Malfoy too. And he's not paying me either, so that's two things we've got in common, isn't it?"

Tiffer hesitantly grasped the first two fingers of Ron's hand and shook. "Tiffer is happy to help Master Weasley."

"Excellent," Ron said, "'cause I'm going to need it."

He helped Tiffer trim down the excess tablecloth, though it still went all around his (her?) body like a burka. Tiffer, in return, showed Ron the promised bed by the ovenit was inside a small cabinet and seemed to consist mainly of flour sacks in a lasagna pan. Their friendship thus solidified, Ron turned to the crisis at hand, namely the lack of Blaise. He gingerly approached Nona Zabini's cookbook, which Blaise had bound to the wall with a heavy chain, and opened it.

Or, rather, tried to open it.

As he sucked on the burnt ends of his fingers, Tiffer squeaked and dove into the pantry. Ron grabbed a wooden spoon and tried to lift the cover from a distance; it burned like a torch, and he had to thrust it into the sink to put it out. He prodded it with his wand a few times, producing blue and purple sparks and occasionally small plumes of smoke, but not actually unsealing the cover. After a moment, he retreated to the other side of the room and grabbed a baking sheet and held it up in front of himself. He'd destroyed Horcruxeswell, helpedat the very least he'd _watched._ This should be easy.

_"Finite incantatum!"_

When Malfoy stormed into the kitchen a half-hour later, he waved aside the smoke and looked at the clutter on the floor, and the scorch marks on the counter, and the perfect circle of smooth tile surrounding the recipe book. The last thing he looked at was Ron, who was still trying to get the saucepan off his head. "Weasley," Malfoy said slowly, "do I even want to ask what in _Merlin's_ name is going on here?"

The saucepan came off, taking quite a bit of hair with it, and Ron pulled himself to his feet. "Well," he said, "where would like me to start?"

"To begin with, what exactly is the point of laying siege to Blaise's precious family heirloom?" Malfoy glanced under some of the counters. "And have you seen a house-elf around here?"

"I want to talk about the elf," Ron said, "but first, see, about Blaise..."

There was, as Ron had predicted, some shouting. There was also a frantic search for Tiffer, who turned up shivering inside an upended stock pot and had to be coaxed out with the prospect of all the washing-up there was to do. And then Malfoy headed for the fireplace, and Ron raced after him, shouting, "Malfoy, don't you dare!"

"Dare what?" he snapped. He reached for the Floo powder, and clutched it close to his chest to keep Ron from taking it. "Dare call my dear old friend to ask what the _hell_ he thinks he's doing to me? Dare punish my most crucial employee for absenteeism? Hmm?"

"He's your partner, not your employee," Ron said, reaching around to grope for the Floo powder, "and I told you, he needs a day off or he's going to go right round the twist!"

"I don't care!" Malfoy said, trying to squirm away. "As long as he can still cook, I don't care if he wears witches' underwear and thinks he's a fern! Get _off_ me!"

"No!" Ron said. "Look, I've been helping him in the kitchen for weeks, I have a pretty good idea what to do"

"Which is why you were trying to blast your way into the cookbook!"

"We'll figure something out!"

"No!" Malfoy said, almost doubled over around the Floo powder. "Not we! There is no we! You're the one who sent him home, _you_ figure out how we are supposed to run a restaurant with no bloody chef!"

"You're the one who worked him to the bone!" Ron snapped back. "He thinks you're going to bury his corpse in the cellar!"

"That's not my fault!"

"Is so!"

"Is not!"

Ron used his greater weight to throw Malfoy against a wall. "It is so, and if you call him I swear I'll walk out that door right now!"

"After causing all this trouble?" Malfoy squirmed, and tried to stomp on Ron's toes. "You wouldn't dare."

"I'll walk," Ron said, groping for the Floo powder again. "I'll walk away like I should've done ages ago, you little ferret, and let you and your elf try to run a restaurant with a head chef who thinks he's a fern! Now give me the jar!"

"Make me!"

"Give it to me!"

"No!"

"Give it to me!"

_"No!"_

"Is this a bad time?" Dennis Creevey asked, and Ron was so shocked that he let Malfoy slip away and toss almost the whole jar of Floo powder into the grate.

Malfoy threw himself on his belly and thrust his head into the fire almost before he'd shouted his destination. "Blaise!" Ron heard him shout. "Blaise Giuseppe Zabini, you get your black Italian arse out of bed and get over here this instant, or so help me, I will come over there and"

He never got to say what he was going to do, because Ron grabbed him by the ankles and hauled him bodily out of the grate. "Malfoy," Ron said, "leave him the hell alone or I'll bury _you_ in the cellar!"

"Let me go, I wasn't finished threatening him yet!" Malfoy clawed at the floor, trying to get back in to the fire; Ron tried to drag him further backwards, but Malfoy got one hand on the hearth and clung like a limpet. "Let go of me, Weasley! Tiffer, help me!"

"Keep the elf out of it!" Ron said, pulling hard. "Dennis, go ahead and open the till. Mr. Zabini is sick, so Mr. Malfoy and I will be cooking today."

"Mr. Malfoy will not!" Malfoy bellowed as the Floo connection closed with a _whoosh._ "Mr. Malfoy refuses to cook! Mr. Weasley is delusional and violent and must be stopped!"

Ron dug his feet in and pulled, and Malfoy's fingers slipped off the stone. He used his momentum to drag Malfoy into the battle-scarred kitchen, where Tiffer had retreated to cower inside the mop bucket. "I'm going to let your legs go now," Ron called over Malfoy's inarticulate swearing. "Are you going to try to escape?"

"No," Malfoy said. The moment Ron released him, he scrambled to his feet and ran for the kitchen door. Ron expected that, and hit him with a Leg-Locker Jinx. "Damn you and your entire ginger horde!" Malfoy shrieked as he toppled over.

Ron crouched over his head and took a deep breath. "Malfoy, listen to me."

"No."

"I could _gag_ you, if you want."

"You wouldn't dare," Malfoy said. "You need my help to run the restaurant without Blaise."

"Can I remind you," Ron said, "That it's _your_ restaurant? Which you really, really don't want me to try to run with an elf and a teenager, while you're bound and gagged in the cellar?"

Malfoy was quiet for a moment, then said, "You are an evil, evil man who will come to a bad end."

"Says the ex-Death Eater spy."

"Exactly. Which means you are _especially_ wicked."

Ron stood up, and offered Malfoy his hand. Malfoy instead hauled himself to his feet on the edge of a counter. "So here's what we're going to do," Ron said, but Malfoy waved a finger in his face to shush him.

"As you so graciously point out, Weasley, this is _my_ restaurant," he said. "So _I_ shall be making the decisions here, thank you very much."

"As long as it doesn't involve kidnapping Blaise or burying his corpse in the cellar," Ron said.

"Don't be ridiculous," Malfoy said. He brushed down his front and walked around the chaotic kitchen, frowning deeply. He examined the cookbook without touching it, nosed around the pantry and the cold cupboard, and picked up a slightly dented baking sheet, only to put it back down.

Ron watched all this with his arms crossed, one eye on the time.

Finally, Malfoy sighed enormously and said, "Where does he keep the _aprons_ in this place?"

"He brings his own," Ron said. "But I'm sure Tiffer can set you up with some tablecloth scraps."

If eyes were wands, Malfoy would've glared an Unforgivable.

They set out trying to do a normal day at the restaurant, with only Ron's memory for reference. He knew the measurements for the pizza dough well enough, or at least well enough to set several tight balls of dough rising on a counter right away; the sauce was problematic, though, and Malfoy argued fervently every step of the way that Ron was doing it wrong, wrong, my god, how can one man be so _wrong?_

"You make it, then," Ron said. "Just don't add any salt."

"Part of the problem is that it _needs_ salt," Malfoy said. "Also, your mincing is abominable."

"I mince just fine," Ron said. "This isn't a potion, after all, it's sauce. Any idiot can make _sauce."_

"Funny, that idiot seemed to be having trouble." He tasted the sauce, then added salt (of course) and oregano. "Bring me the sausage."

"Get your own sausage."

"I don't want my own sausage, I want your sausage." Ron stared at him, and Malfoy turned a delicate shade of pink. "In an entirely culinary sense, of course."

"Of course." Ron sank the knife into a ripe tomato. "So get your own."

The toppings were another difficulty, of course, and led to endless arguments about quantity and proportion and combinations. Zabini had also left behind some ingredients that Ron simply didn't comprehendhe had eaten the pineapple and ham, of course, but what were they supposed to do with a head of fennel? Four pounds of hazelnuts? Chopped octopus marinated in wine? And did Blaise really use this much garlic, or was some of that just for snacking?

They got pizzas out of the oven just in time for the first lunch customers. Malfoy declared victory, and tried to go down to the cellar, resulting in another tussle. "We finished lunch!" Malfoy shoutedalmost whined, really. "I deserve a nap!"

"No, you don't," Ron said, "because we didn't _finish_ lunch, unless by _finish_ you mean _start."_

"We must've made fifty pizzas!"

"Try _five." _

"That's still a lot of pizza," Malfoy pouted.

"Do you even pay attention to your own receipts?" Ron asked. "'We can sell that in an hour, if it's busy."

"Still." Malfoy tried to squirm away. "Can't I get a nap? Just a little one?"

"Do you let Blaise get naps?"

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Nice try, Weasley, but I refuse to learn from this experience."

This charming exchange was interrupted by a shriek from the counter. Ron rushed forward, vaulting over the rubbish bin, and discovered that the cash register had closed its drawer on Dennis's wrist. A customer was beating the register with a cane, though it didn't seem to be helping. Ron quickly pushed him out of the way and used a Freezing Charm to immobilize the register. "Get me something to pry with," he called into the kitchen.

"Like what?" Malfoy shouted.

"Like a...prying thing!"

"Oh, you are so very heroic, Weasley."

Malfoy came charging out with the offset spatula. "Not that thing!" Ron said. "It's the only one we have!"

"This is the only competent employee we have!" Malfoy shouted. "Do you want to keep him or not?"

Dennis whimpered.

They eventually settled on the combination of a wicked-looking bread knife and a fork. Ron wedged the bread knife into the drawer, and when Malfoy released the Freezing Charm he forced the drawer open and propped it with the fork. Dennis freed his hand and clutched it to his chest while Ron scooped as much gold as possible out of the register and into the fold of his apron before the fork gave way. When it did, the drawer snapped shut, and the register gave a menacing growl.

"I reckon I ought to take that to my dad's office," Ron said, watching its keys ripple menacingly.

Malfoy grabbed an empty flour sack out of the bin. "No, no, I'll get it sortedjust don't make any sudden movements."

"What about the customer?" Dennis whimpered.

Ron and Malfoy looked up as one, and Ron noticed for the first time the elderly wizard holding a slice of pizza wrapped in paper. He was staring at them, shell-shocked, and the fork had speared through the point of his hat.

"Hello," Malfoy said, rustling the sack. "We'll be with you momentarily."

"Keep the change," the wizard said weakly, backing away. So, unfortunately, did a few other customers in the room.

"Er, don't worry!" Ron called out. "Everything's under control! We'll just...we need a moment to put our, um, accounts in order, and we'll be right with you."

Malfoy circled around the back of the register with the sack, and suddenly leapt forward. He and the register both went over the edge of the counter and rolled, struggling, into the kitchen corridor. Ron tried not to watch as he sorted Galleons and Sickles into the first container he could findthe small, empty plastic buckets from the imported cheese. They still smelled a bit like old milk, but (from the sounds of struggle he was definitely _not looking at)_ they weren't exactly going to have any alternatives soon.

Dennis suddenly stepped up to the counter, still clutching his wrist (which was coming out in a spectacular bruise). "Mr. Weasley?" he said in a strangled voice. "Erm, Mr. Weasley?"

"Just a minute, Dennis," Ron called from his crouching place on the floor.

"Mr. Weasley?"

"I'm _busy_ down here, Dennis!"

"Ron?"

Ron blinked. In the corridor, the register dinged aggressively, and Malfoy said "Ha!"

"Ron, I know you're down there."

Slowly, still conscious of the coins in his lap, Ron peeked over the edge of the counter. Harry and Ginny were standing on the other side, looking at him as if he were insane.

"Hi," Ron said. "Be right with you."

Ginny pushed past Harry. "Ron, what is"

_"Ha!"_ Malfoy came staggering out with one fist pumping over his head. He was covered in a fine layer of flour, except for where he'd split his lip, but he still had a manically triumphant grin on his face and the flour sack of sadly rattling register under his arm. That is, he was grinning until he noticed Harry and Ginny. Then his face sort of slumped into abject horror for a moment, before settling into a deep and twisted scowl. "Out," he snarled. "Out, out, _out!"_

"Malfoy, leave off," Ron said, pushing back from the counter. "Go unhex the register."

"No," he said. "Get that...that..._person _out of my restaurant!"

"Good to see you too, Malfoy," Harry said stiffly.

Ginny banged on the counter. "Ron, what are you _doing_ here? And why are you wearing an apron?"

"Out!" Malfoy barked.

Ron took a deep breath. "Malfoy, shut up. Dennis, mind the, er, buckets. Harry, Ginny...can we talk later? Possibly much later?" He tried smiling at them.

"I'd like to talk now, actually," Ginny said.

Malfoy's eyes were looking a bit glassy. "Get out of my restaurant! I will not have you in my restaurant!"

Tiffer suddenly ran out of the kitchen. "Mr. Weasley, your pizzas is burning!"

"Right," Ron said. An eerie and total calm settled over him such as he hadn't felt since the last time he was running for his life. He thrust three cheese buckets full of coin at Dennis, kicked the register out of the way, grabbed Malfoy by the collar and hauled him into the kitchen. With his free hand, he charmed open the over doors, letting the smoke of four lightly scorched pizzas (margherita, pepperoni, pineapple and ham, and octopus) billow into the air, and then turned down the heat on a pot of sauce that was gleefully boiling over. "Malfoy," he said, "please shut up, before I kill you."

"You can't kill me, I hired you."

"No, you _didn't."_ He banished the ruined pizzas and grabbed the next set of gently rising dough balls. "And if you go out there and harass Harry or my sister any more, I will kill you. And bury you in the bloody cellar. Understand?"

"He tried to kill me," Malfoy hissed, "he's more than half the reason my family's name is mud"

"He got you the pardon that saved your life!"

"I never asked for his help!" Spit flew from Malfoy's lips, and his eyes were bulging alarmingly.

Ron found he didn't care. "He's also a paying customer, so you can't kick him out," he said, frantically rolling out dough. "Go insult his hair color if it'll make you feel better."

"I won't have him in here"

_"Why?"_ Ron shouted. "Because he wounded your bloody pride?"

Malfoy's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment, and then he groped under his tablecloth-cum-apron until he found his List. "You're going to pay," he muttered feverishly, "you're all going to bloody pay, some day, I'm going to make every _one_ of you pay"

"Oh, _shut up,"_ Ron said, and snatched the List out of Malfoy's hands.

_"Give that back!"_ Malfoy shrieked.

"Certainly," Ron said, and dunked it into the simmering sauce.

Malfoy's eyes were wide, but his pupils were blown to the limit of the gray iris. All the skin of his face seemed to pull backwards, and his lips stretched out to reveal his tightly-clenched teeth. With an inarticulate cry of rage, he leapt forward, wand forgotten, and reached for Ron's throat.

Ron got his arms up in time to avoid a choking, but Malfoy's forward momentum knocked them both to the floor, and for a moment they rolled there, Malfoy punching and clawing insanely, Ron trying to wrestle him into stillness. There seemed to be shouting everywhere, most of it indiscernible over Malfoy's screeching and swearing. Ron was pretty certain Malfoy bit him. He managed to get the upper hand for a moment and pinned Malfoy across the throat, hoping the lack of air would bring him to his senses, but Malfoy slipped under his arm and pounded their heads together so hard Ron saw stars.

_"Locomotor mortis!"_ somebody shouted over the noise.

Ron rolled away just in time to avoid being caught in the hex; Draco went stiff and flopped to the floor, though his eyes still rolled malevolently in his head. Harry and Ginny stood in the doorway of the kitchen, looking simultaneously gobsmacked and angry. "Ron," Harry said slowly, "for the last time, what the hell is going on here?"

Ron stood and wiped his suddenly-sweaty hands on his apron. "Can I explain later?" he asked. "Only, it's the lunch rush."


	7. Chapter 7

Harry and Ginny spent much of the afternoon sitting at a corner table and giving Ron grave looks whenever he emerged from the kitchen. He therefore tried not to emerge too often, and spent the rest of the afternoon feverishly cooking (and sympathizing with Blaise). He also kept Malfoy in the full-body bind, propped up in a corner with a towel over his face so Ron didn't have to watch him glare. It made the kitchen run far, far smoother, especially once Tiffer overcame his guilt (Ron was going to stick with _him_ until proven otherwise) and pitched in, instead of loitering at Malfoy's feet and whimpering slightly.

Around half past two, as Ron transferred calzones to a display tray, someone coughed lightly from behind him. He started, but found only Harry standing in the corridor, looking around with a befuddled expression. "Oh, hey," Ron said. "Er. I'll be just a minute."

"Take your time," Harry said. "Ginny had to go."

"Oh. Right." Ron levitated the last of the hot calzones to the tray, and banished the baking sheet to the sink, where Tiffer was overseeing the washing-up. "What about you?"

"I've still got some time," Harry said. "Need a hand with something?"

Ron didn't, but he let Harry carry one of the trays (pepperoni and fennel) while he took the other (olive, pepper and anchovy). "Tiffer, make sure to get the pizzas out in five minutes," he called over his shoulder. Dennis was doing his best to keep the money sorted in the plastic buckets under the counter, and the register was twitching restlessly inside the flour sack in the corner, and in general things were humming along about as flawlessly as they could reasonably expect. Ron slid the two trays of calzones into the display case, then stripped off his apron and grabbed a table. "Okay, Harry. This is a really long story."

"I kind of expected that," he said. "It'd be a bit disappointing to find you working in Draco Malfoy's pizzeria and the whole thing just turned out to be a comical misunderstanding."

"Don't I wish," Ron muttered. He summoned a pair of butterbeers from behind the counter. "Here, on the house. You're going to want that."

Ron explained, in brief, how Malfoy and Zabini had approached him, how they'd begged for his help over and over, how badly they'd _needed_ the help, and how Zabini had gone mad the night before. He particularly emphasized their complete ineptitude with basic household charms, and the bit about Blaise being drunk on the floor. "And I couldn't just _leave_ them to it," he concluded. "Because I bet you that inside a week, they'd have killed themselves, killed each other, or killed a customer. Still might, in fact."

Harry shook his head. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around Malfoy running a pizzeria."

"It's part of his grand revenge plan," Ron said. "Or so he says. Personally, I think he's just doing Blaise a favor and doesn't want to admit it."

"What about you?" Harry asked.

Ron peeked over his shoulder to check that the display case was still full, the kitchen was smoke-free and Dennis hadn't been eaten by the register yet. "What about me?"

"Why are you doing Zabini and Malfoy a favor?" Harry asked.

"I just told you" Ron said.

"No, you didn't," Harry said. "You said they were hopeless and they needed you and they asked you, but you didn't explain why you actually did it."

"Because they were hopeless and they needed me and they asked?" Ron said.

"Since when do you do anything Malfoy asked?"

Harry sat back and folded his arms like he'd scored a point; Ron grimaced, and picked at a small stain on the tablecloth while he thought. "He did save my life, Harry."

"He tripped you while he was running away."

"I _know,"_ Ron said, "but still. It wasn't like I was doing anything anyway."

Harry looked uncomfortable, and tugged at the red trim on his robes, the uniform of a trainee Auror. "You know you can reapply, right? I mean, you didn't even have to quit the first time"

"I know," Ron said. He wasn't eager to have yet another conversation about his arse injury in this place, particularly around customers. "I'm just saying, it was no skin off my nose to give Malfoy a hand, okay?"

"And that's why you did it?"

"Well, of course it sounds stupid like that," Ron said. "I thought...look, I reckon I also felt sorry for him. A little. Because of the hopelessness and the asking and stuff, which I just told you."

Harry looked around the restaurant. "So you're working for him out of pity?"

"I'm not working for him," Ron said. "I'm helping. It's entirely different."

"You mean he's not even paying you for this?" Harry asked incredulously.

"He doesn't need to," Ron said. He wondered why the idea made him so irritated. "I'm just doing him a favor, okay? And when everything's in order, I'll walk away."

"Define 'in order,'" Harry said.

Ron looked at the stain again. "You know...orderly. No more mad chefs or possessed cash registers, that sort of thing. When they don't need me."

Harry was looking at him like _he_ was mad, or possible just stupid, which Ron didn't exactly appreciate. "And when's that going to be, if you're running the whole bloody place days at a time?"

"Fine," Ron said. "Let's go unbind Malfoy and let him have at it. Maybe he can try strangling _you."_

"That's not what I meant," Harry said. "Just... did you know Fred and George have been trying to reach you for days? You're never home and you're not answering their letters. You're not answering _my_ letters, either."

"I know, I know," Ron sighed. "And I'm supposed to fix the henhouse before Mum and Dad get back from Ibiza. But what am I supposed to do? Leave them hanging?"

"It wouldn't be a bad idea," Harry said. "It's not like we owe them anything, really."

"Which would be why you got them the pardons," Ron said.

"We don't owe them anything _now,"_ Harry said. _"You_ don't owe them anything."

"And I can quit any time," Ron insisted. "This is just for laughs."

"Yeah, 'cause you're laughing so hard."

Ron emptied his butterbeer and took Harry's empty bottle right out of his hands. "Look, mate, what's with the interrogation? What's your problem with me working here?"

"Malfoy," Harry said flatly. "I don't like him."

"Congratulations, the feeling's mutual."

"I'm serious," Harry said urgently. "Just because he helped us doesn't mean I trust him. Look at how he acted today!"

"I don't mean to defend him, Harry," Ron said, "but you did sort of cut his face in half that one time."

"That was years ago," Harry said. "And it doesn't explain why he tried to jump on you."

"Harry, what kind of wicked plot is Malfoy going to work out of a pizzeria?" Ron asked. "Death by olives? Evil cheese? Garlic toast of wickedness?"

"You said something about revenge," Harry insisted.

"I also boiled his list in the marinara sauce, so I don't think we're in danger."

Harry sighed, and they stared at one another for a moment. "You know your family's not going to like it," he said. "Ginny still blames Malfoy for Bill's face."

"Okay, first, if they can forgive Percy, anything's possible," Ron said.

Harry pointed out, "Percy's dead."

"But we did forgive him, didn't we?" Ron said. "Secondly, for my family to be angry, someone would have to _tell_ them, and you're not going to tell them, are you?"

Harry looked baffled. "Okay, Ron, _my_ first point: Ginny already knows, so what the hell do you want me to do, Obliviate her?"

"You do that and I'll break your arm," Ron said. "Just ask her not to say anything. You can do that, can't you? She'll listen."

"No, she won't," Harry said. "And that's my second point, which isif there's nothing wrong with you working here, or whatever the hell it is you're doing, why do you want to keep it a secret?"

"There isn't anything wrong with it," Ron said, "butwellit's not any of your business if I want to keep a secret."

Harry's face went cold and hard, and he stood up, letting his chair scrape loudly on the floor. "Fine," he said. "If that's how you want to play it."

Ron flinched. "Harry, I didn't mean it like that."

"Then how did you mean it?"

Ron opened his mouth and found he had nothing to say.

Harry nodded slowly, then pushed the chair in more carefully. "I'll see you around, mate," he said, still pretty brisk. "At least now I know where to find you."

As Harry walked out the door, Ron let his forehead fall onto the table. _Brilliant work, Weasley,_ he thought to himself. _Piss off your best mate and freak out your entire family in one blow._ Ginny would have Fred and George on her side by suppertime, Bill would hear by the next dayif he hadn't already had it from Fleur, and was just giving Ron the silent treatment. And within twenty-four hours there would be owls on their way to Romania and Ibiza, carrying the news of Ron's...whatever.

Except he wasn't doing anything wrong! That was the thinghe was selling pizza. He was making and selling pizza, and okay, he was doing it with Malfoynot _for_ Malfoy, though, that was an important distinction. He was just helping, not a mate, not even a colleague, not even a non-violent co-worker anymore...but he was just _helping,_ and when he wasn't needed anymore, he'd be gone. It didn't matter why he was helping. It shouldn't matter. He was going to help and he was going to leave, and then...then...

"Mr. Weasley?"

"What?" he snapped, looking up.

Tiffer recoiled a step but recovered slightly. "Is can be pizza time now? Tiffer has made the dough, but you is needing to help topping."

Ron sighed. "Of course, of course, I'm coming." The glass display case was half-empty all of a sudden, and Dennis was trying to explain something to Archie and serve a customer at the same time. Pizza was beginning to feel like a very harsh mistress.

They made it through the dinner rush, with Archie only dozing off at the counter once. The register eventually stopped dinging at them randomly, and Ron decided to delegate all the dough-making to Tiffer, who managed to be faster than him even if he stopped trying to measure ingredients. He devoted himself to toppings, fillings, sauces and desserts, which may have incorporated slightly more liqueur than was entirely necessary, or even called for in the recipe. (It had worked for Blaise, hadn't it?)

Towards the end of the day, the full-body bind on Malfoy began to wear off; he twitched the towel off his head, flexed his fingers slightly, and began making squeaky grunts in Ron's general direction. "Oh ah," he said several times through rigid lips.

"What was that, Malfoy?" Ron asked, scrubbing a baking sheet.

_"Ohhh ahhh."_

"Sorry?"

_"Ohh aww!"_

Ron paused. "Did you say _oil can?"_

_"UCK OOO!"_ he enunciated.

"Oh," Ron said. He saw Malfoy's fingers flex distinctly, for emphasis. "Merlin, Malfoy, you can't even be civil when you're paralyzed."

"Oo araride ee!"

"You were trying to choke me. No sympathy here."

"Icked aan," Malfoy growled, and jerked his head spasmodically to the side.

The doorbell rang for the first time in a while, and Ron quickly wiped his hands and headed to the counter. He'd sent Archie home over an hour ago, but he didn't remember if he'd turned over the sign to CLOSED on the door. It certainly wouldn't hurt to serve one more customer, thoughwell, not in a business sense. In a literal sense, the hex mark on his arse was starting to ache faintly, because he'd been standing for hours and hours and of course the day had to somehow get _worse._

So he limped a bit as he approached the counter, calling out a "Be right with you!" Coming out of the corridor, though, all he could see over the counter's edge were several bobbing fedoras in different colors. Several powerful suspicions overtook him: that the shop was a victim of a bizarre curse; that Fred and George were exacting a preemptive and hat-related vengeance on him for not revealing his ties to the pizzeria; that Tiffer was going to be taken away by an army of liberated house elves in fancy hats. It was very late in the evening, and anything seemed possible.

The voice that called over the edge of the counter wasn't an elf's voice, though. It was a rasping croak, soon followed by a goblin's long, warty nose. "No need to put yourself out," the goblin said, apparently standing on tip-toe. "We just wanted to have a look around."

"Er...all right." Ron stood where the register had once been, and counted six young goblins in the front of the restaurant. Goblins in fedoras and pinstriped robes, no less. The shortest one, who had spoken, jerked one long finger over his shoulder, and the others fanned out around the room, climbing on the tables, examining the portrait of Blaise's mum, even sniffing the tablecloths. "Is there anything I can get you at all?" Ron asked suspiciously.

Instead of answering, the goblin asked, "Is Malfoy in?" and started stroking the glass display case. There wasn't much in it but a few cold calzones and a single slice of pizza with octopus and smoked mozzarella, which had been surprisingly popular.

"Mr. Malfoy's indisposed right now," Ron said (Hermione had taught him that word, though she normally used it as code for "on the rag;" on reflection, that made it oddly appropriate for Malfoy as well). "I can help you with anything you need, though."

"Can you now," the goblin said, and stroked his little beard (which was rather thinner and fuzzier than Ron was used to seeing on goblins). "Well, that's very interesting, innit?"

"Is there something in particular you want?" Ron asked.

The lead goblin snapped his clawed fingers. "Blackpick, show him the hammer." A chubby goblin whose hat didn't match his suit lumbered forward and produced from somewhere in his jacket a large, heavy mallet: its handle was wrapped in scuffed leather, and the head had been inlaid with something shiny which was partly worn off. "Misterwhat's your name, sir?"

"Ron Weasley," Ron said, hoping sort of idly to strike fear into their hearts. None of them reacted with any sign of recognition, though.

"Mr. Weezy," the goblin said, "is this not a lovely hammer?"

Ron pretended to examine it at length. "I dunno," he said. "Looks a bit dated to me. And I've seen bigger."

Blackpick the goblin swelled with indignation, almost reaching the level of Ron's belt, but the leader waved the words off. "You're very brave, Mr. Weezy, I like that."

"I'm so gratified," Ron said.

The lead goblin took the hammer from Blackpick and turned it over in his hands a few times, so that the inlay caught the light. "This is the hammer Thunderstrike that was forged in the very fires of Mount Vesuvius," he said. "It was wielded in war by Redhook, Silverflail, Greatfoot the Lesser, Quickfist the Unwashed and Og Gutgarters, who died at the battle of Newcastle." He eyed Ron meaningfully. "A hammer like this could make a big mess in a little shop like yours."

Ron stared for a moment, then folded his arms across his chest. "Okay, here's a tip," he said. "If you're going to threaten people, you should really skip the history lesson. I always hated that class."

The goblins looked dismayed, and Blackpick made two heavy, clawed fists. The Head Goblin just gave Thunderstrike the Hammer a few experimental swings. "We're not threatening you, Mr. Weezy," he said. We're just pointing out some important facts. Thunderstrike was made for breaking things, that's a very important fact. One Mr. Malfoy ought to be remembering."

Ron pulled his wand out of his apron pocket. "How about I just tie up the lot of you right now and let the Ministry sort it out in the morning?"

The leader goblin just smiled, a visual Ron could've done very well without. "Or how about you deliver a little message to Mr. Malfoy for us?" And before Ron could react, he swung Thunderstrike the hammer in a tremendous arc and brought it down on the display case. Glass and calzones flew everywhere, and Ron dove for the floor into order to avoid the shrapnel. By the time he got to his feet again, the goblins were bursting through the door into the street beyond and vanishing through the mouth of the cul-de-sac. "Hey!" Ron shouted impotently, limping out the door. _"Hey!_ Get back here, you dirty little bastards!"

The night air was cool for August, and it was so late that even Diagon Alley was quiet and still. Someone's cat yowled at him, and far away he fancied he heard a bit of thunder. That was all.

Ron stormed back into the pizzeria and tried to repair the display case. The hammer must've been magical, though, because none of the charms he tried made the broken glass more than twitch. Furiously, he charmed a broom and dustpan to clean up the debris, then marched back into the kitchen. Tiffer was emerging from his nest, yawning, and Malfoy was still propped where Ron'd left him, once again as still as a bloody statue.

_"Finite incantatum,"_ Ron said severely, and Malfoy wobbled as his muscles unlocked. "What the bloody _hell_ was that about?"

"I thought it was rather obvious myself," Malfoy said, patting himself down. "I was even spared the visuals and I got the gist of it."

"What are a pack of goblins doing looking for you?" Ron demanded. "Goblins in hats, no less!"

"They were wearing hats, were they? Wish I'd seen it." Malfoy lifted a pan from the sink and checked his reflection in it.

"They also smashed the hell out of the display case."

"Really? Damn, I'll have to" Malfoy looked up at Ron for the first time and froze, going suddenly pale. "Weasley, youare you"

"What? Am I what?" Ron asked. Malfoy gestured weakly to the area of his neck, and Ron touched his own gingerly. His fingers came away red, wet, and luckily, tasting of oregano. "Oh. 'S just sauce, from the case. The one that _exploded_ when they hit it with their mate, the great big _hammer."_

"Thank Merlin," Malfoy sighed. "I mean, it's good thatthat is, you're notnever mind. What were you saying?"

Ron was actually kind of curious as to what Malfoy was saying, but he wasn't going to be driven off the topic. "A load of goblins looking for you broke the front counter," he said. "You wanna explain that one?"

"There is no explanation," Malfoy said promptly.

"There's not?"

"No."

"Well that's good to know."

"I mean," he continued, "I've been on time with all my payments so far, and I didn't even borrow that much to begin with."

That stopped Ron short. "Wait, what? You have a loan?"

"I wouldn't call it a loan, exactly," Malfoy said with a sigh. "That would imply that it was completely legal and official."

"Oh, Merlin's big hairy balls." Ron leaned against a counter, taking the weight off his bad side. "You're telling me you borrowed money from goblins, but _not_ through the bank?"

"The bank doesn't want anything more to do with me than the Ministry," Malfoy said. "And yes, I may have borrowed some of our initial capital investment."

"How much is some?" Ron asked.

Malfoy mumbled.

"Didn't quite catch that."

"...most of it?"

Ron wasn't sure he'd caught that, either, but Malfoy's expressionface angled down, jaw thrust out slightly, lips tightconvinced him. "I thought you were rolling in gold," he said.

"You'd be surprised how little remains after court costs and Ministry raids," he said sharply.

"So why'd you agree to partner Blaise, if you couldn't afford it?" Ron asked.

"Because it takes gold to breed gold, you numbskull," Malfoy snapped. "And I didn't thinkI'd budgeted for the rent, but not the cost of making the place livable, and the import taxes were higher than I anticipated, and then we had to hire helpbut I'm making the payments, and on time, so I don't know what Stonefoot and his lackeys thought they were going to accomplish by threatening me."

"I dunno," Ron said, "anything they want? Because seriously, without the guarantees of the bank"

"I realize that I made a mistake, Weasley," Malfoy growled, and he still wasn't looking up, and he still wasn't looking at Ron. "I realize that the situation may in fact have deteriorated. But that's none of your concern, so if you'll kindly clean up the mess and then close for the night, I'll take care of it." And he pushed harshly past Ron, paused to look at the ruin of the display case, and then disappeared into the Floo.


	8. Chapter 8

Ron slept like a rock, because he was exhausted, but he was troubled by vivid dreams of Malfoy and goblins and exploding calzones. In one of them, Malfoy was wearing a slinky red dress and Stonefoot had tied him to a train track. "Say hello to my little friend!" Stonefoot shouted, and hit Malfoy over the head with a hammer the size of a sheepdog. Malfoy's head was crushed, but all that came out was a river of tomato sauce flecked with olives.

It was already approaching lunch by the time he'd dragged himself out of bed, stared at his desk and washed up; the right side of his arse was cramped and stiff where the hex had been. He found Errol under the kitchen table and sent him to the pizzeria with a notice that he'd be coming in lateit was safer than using the Floo to tell Malfoy to his face. Errol took a few tries to take off, but eventually got into the air and headed in a generally Londonward direction. (Ron took a moment to mourn for Pig, though in truth he hadn't been much better at delivering the post. Pig was never much of an owl, but he'd been Ron's, and that counted for something.) Tiffer could probably take over much of the kitchen for the day, and there was somebody that Ron needed to see before he went in.

Bill and Fleur had bought a little cottage with a large garden, which Fleur redecorated roughly once every fortnight. Ron Apparated to the edge of the property and walked up the little lane, letting the exercise stretch his muscles out. By the time he got to the stoop he was able to walk almost normally. "Hello?" he said, sticking his head through the door. "Anyone home?"

"Round back," Bill shouted. "And have a care, we've been gardening."

Snorting, Ron headed around the side of the cottage. The earth had been turned up in great random clods and patches, and a running hosepipe was creating a small lake among the beans. Bill was on his knees, planting pale seedlings with thin, palm-shaped leaves, but he waved Ron over with a muddy hand. "Isn't it a bit late in the year to be planting anything?" Ron asked.

"Fleur's been on me to finish the borders before we head back to Egypt," he explained. "Dunno why she wants borders so badly when we're not going to be here to see them, but if it makes her happy..."

"When do you go back, September?"

"Fifteenth." Bill flicked his ponytail over his shoulder, getting mud in his hair and on his face and neck. "Why do you think the bank's giving us so much time off lately? Got to 'get our affairs in order.'"

"And by 'affairs' they mean 'gardens?'" Ron crouched down next to Bill, wincing at the pull of stiff muscles.

Bill didn't miss it. "Leg getting to you?"

"Had a long day yesterday," Ron muttered.

"So I heard."

Of course he had. Ron cringed all over again. "Was there shouting?" he asked. "Please tell me Ginny wasn't shouting."

"Not about you, she wasn't," Bill said. He rocked back on his heels and scratched his face, smearing more mud. "But apparently she's outraged that I'm not _more_ outraged, if that makes any sense."

"How outraged are you?" Ron asked.

"Not at all, really."

Ron looked at Bill carefully, at his facethe permanent twist on one side of his mouth, the deep notch below the bridge of his nose, the ridge that pulled down his right eyelid. "Do you hate him?" he blurted.

"Of course," Bill said. "Greyback was a monster and I'm glad he's dead."

"I meant Malfoy."

"Malfoy didn't try to chew my face off," Bill said, "and I don't see the point in looking for extra people to be angry at."

Ron relaxed just a tiny bit. Perhaps he _wasn't_ going to be completely disowned for this.

"Mind you," Bill continued, "I don't like the little bastard at all, and I can't fathom how you've managed not to kill him yet, but he did help save the world, and you."

"He didn't mean it," Ron said.

"Does that make a difference?"

Ron punched him gently on the arm. "You're getting philosophical in your old age, mate."

"You young whippersnappers need the benefit of my advanced wisdom," he said.

"Actually, right now, I could use the benefit of your knowledge of goblins," Ron said.

They went inside, and Ron explained about Stonefoot, Stonefoot's hammer, and Malfoy's "loan" while Bill washed up in the kitchen sink. He poured them both a glass of cold pumpkin juice, and by the time Ron had got to Malfoy's promise to "take care of it," Bill was shaking his head slowly.

"You can't treat goblins like wizards," he said. "Their whole culture is built around treasure and fighting, and if they can fight over treasure, so much the better. Even the bankers gouge on the loans, as much as the Ministry allowsand if Malfoy signed anything, Stonefoot will use that to wring him dry."

"Malfoy says he hasn't got any gold to wring out," Ron said. "Won't Stonefoot leave him alone when he figures that out?"

"Assuming Stonefoot believes him," Bill said, "he'll probably use the excuse to smash the hell out of your pizzeria and carry off whatever he can by right of plunder."

"Merlin," Ron muttered, then: "Wait, it's not _my_ pizzeria."

Bill raised an eyebrow. "Really? So you just work there?"

"I don't work there, I'm helping," Ron said, wondering how many times he'd have to explain this. "If I was working for him, he'd be paying me."

"Of course," Bill said. "Very noble of you. Heroic, even, from the sound of it."

Ron squirmed. "It's not _that_ big a deal. I mean, okay, I want to strangle the little git about five times a day, but I wanted to kill him a lot during the war, too, you know?"

"Yeah, but that was during the war," Bill said. "There were bigger things to worry about than Malfoy being a monstrous git."

"And the pizzeria isn't important enough to be getting upset over," Ron said. "It's just a lark. For laughs, you know?"

"Sure," Bill said. "Just something to pass the time, right?"

"Right," Ron said, wondering why _Harry_ couldn't have understood it so quickly and completely.

Bill raised an eyebrow at Ron. "Passing the time until what?"

Ron choked a little, and set down his glass of juice very quickly. "Er," he said, "I...I'm working on that."

"When you're not running around the pizzeria," Bill said.

"I'm not going to be at the pizzeria forever," Ron protested. "And then...well..."

Well, then he could go back to the Burrow and the henhouse, and in a week or so his parents would be back from Ibiza. And then...keep waiting, he supposed, until something came up, something that he could do, something that made sense after he'd quit school, fought a war, and helped just a tiny bit in saving the world.

But then again (he suddenly thought), what could actually _top_ that?

"I'm not asking just to wind you up," Bill said quietly after a moment. "I just want to know you're going to be all right when we head back to Egypt."

"I've already got Mum, Dad and Hermione worrying over me," Ron muttered.

"Yeah, and they're worrying just like us," Bill said. "Or at least, Mum and Dad are. They keep asking me why you don't write back more often."

Ron hadn't actually read the owl post for days, hadn't had time for writing his own letters even longer. He sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "Thanks, mate, just what I need. A load of guilt."

"Oh, don't get maudlin on me, now," Bill said. "I'm just saying, if you're not sticking with the pizzeria business, you should be looking for something you will stick with."

"Why would I stick with the pizzeria?" Ron asked. "I just told you"

"I know, I know, I'm just _saying,"_ Bill said. "I'm getting senile in my old age, you'll have to forgive me."

Ron took a deep breath. "Right. Sorry. Justyou never answered my question, about the goblins."

"You're the one who got us sidetracked," Bill said, and leaned forward over the table. "So, like I was saying, you can't deal with this Stonefoot on straightforward wizard terms. You can either solve this the goblin way, with lots of hammers, or you force his hand and take it to the bank."

"What good would that do?" Ron asked.

Bill smiled slightly. "One, if you make a public complaint it'll make a stink between the bank and the Ministry that the bank can't ignore. Two, the bank has a sole charter to make loans in Britain, and the board includes all the elders of all the goblin clansmeaning somebody is going to be pissed off to learn a member of a rival clan is making a bit of gold on the side."

That sounded like a nice, neat way to solve the problem to Ron, so of course it was also the absolute last thing Malfoy would consent to do. "What about the way with the hammers?" he asked. "How does that one work?"

"You beat the hell out of them," Bill said, brows knit. "If you win, they'll probably acknowledge that you bested themprobablyand submit to you."

"Probably?" Ron echoed. "That doesn't sound good."

"It's a cultural thing," Bill admitted. "They'll fight each other all the time and be gracious loserssort ofbut since you're not a goblin..."

"...we might just piss them off," Ron said. "Unless we really kick their arses."

"But not too badly," Bill asked, "or you might just instigate a blood feud with their clan, and those sorts of things almost never end well."

"No blood feuds, gotcha," Ron said gloomily. "Any other advice?"

"Yeah," Bill said. "Be careful. And remember, we're all behind you, if you need us."

Ron couldn't quite doubt that, but he was fairly certain they weren't behind Malfoy, just like he knew Malfoy would never agree to the public airing of his finances that a proper complaint would require. Instead, Ron tried to think of how theyor more likely, just hecould fight a gang of hammer-wielding goblins without completely destroying the pizzeria. He stopped by Flourish and Blotts and browsed the section on the goblin wars, trying to find a book that was the right mix of short, informative, and unlikely to kill him with boredom. Hermione might have been moved to tears by the sight.

By the time he got to the pizzeria (with _Wandwork and Weaponry of the Fifth Goblin Rebellion_ under his arm) the dining area was busy, the glass display case had been covered in cardboard, and Malfoy's hair was sticking up sharply on one side, apparently held in place with a dried crust of alfredo sauce. "I am not going to murder you right now," he hissed and he all but dragged Ron into the kitchen, "but that's only because I need someone to mind the kitchen while I drink myself blind and sleep away the weekend."

"Good to see you too," Ron said, and stowed his book safely away on a high shelf. "I'd say I missed you, but I'd be lying."

"Blaise," Malfoy said, ignoring him, "has apparently disappeared, because I cannot find hide nor hair of him, so thank you very much for that. The elf is trying to teach himself Italian, in the event we can ever open the bloody cookbook, and Creevey refuses to go near the till despite the fact that I have _told_ him several times it has been dealt with."

"Dealt with how?" Ron asked, but Malfoy just dove into the sink and put a soapy pot directly on the burner. Ron dried it with a charm, but the chemical odor of soap on the burner seeped into the air anyway. "And how do you reckon we should deal with our little friend from last night?"

"I don't know how you deal with your little friend, and frankly I'd rather not think about it," Malfoy said feverishly, splashing oil into the pot and following it with a mass of chopped garlic and onion.

Ron leaned close to his ear. "I meant the goblin, Malfoy."

"Oh." He stopped in mid-stir and blinked. "Er. Of course."

"What did you think I was talking about?"

"Never mind, and get your mind out of the gutter," Malfoy snapped. "I told you I'd see to it."

"I've just talked to my brother," Ron told him, and grabbed a ball of dough to roll out, just to keep busy.

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "I like macaroons. Do you have any other non sequiturs to share?"

"My brother who works for the _bank,"_ Ron said. "He gave me some advice on handling Stonefoot."

"Why, thank you for talking about me behind my back, I do so appreciate it," Malfoy said. "I said I'd take care of it, didn't I?"

"And did you?"

He threw a large whole sausage into the pot with dangerous force. "I'm currently working on it," he declared.

"Well, so am I, and you probably won't like the solutions I've got."

"All the more reason," Malfoy said, "for me to handle it myself." He charmed open an enormous can of whole peeled tomatoes and dumped the contents on top of the sausage, and then he walked away, leaving Ron to salvage a decent calzone filling from the mess in the pot.

Late that night, while Tiffer rigorously mopped the dining area and Malfoy swore through installation of a new display case, Ron poured over the goblin book. He even made notes. (He reckoned Hermione would be in a dead faint if she could see him.) It helped when he skipped over the boring parts and didn't pretend to keep track of the names or dates. The important part was the conclusion anyway, which didn't give him a whole lot of hope that he could deliver an appropriate thrashing to Stonefoot's gang, but more hope than he'd had right after talking to Bill.

"What _are_ you so absorbed in?" Malfoy finally snapped at him. "There don't seem to be enough illustrations for you."

"It's about how to fight goblins," he said. "Says that the only way a goblin can ever really beat a well-prepared wizard with a wand is by getting about fifty of his friends together to help."

"Well, that's charming," Malfoy said. "Also disturbing and utterly useless, of course."

"Bill says if we beat back Stonefoot's gang, they'll leave the place alone."

"Yes, because we'll have smashed it to kindling for them," Malfoy said.

Ron pretended to be absorbed in the book. "He also suggested that we could complain at the bank and they'd rein the gang in, if you'd rather go that route."

"I'd rather," he said, "try things my way, which requires neither bloodshed nor public embarrassment, thank you."

"Have you decided what your way is, then?" Ron asked.

Malfoy nodded smartly, standing back to admire the new counter. "Of course," he said. "I'm going to negotiate."

"Negotiate."

"Yes, are you deaf?"

"With a gang of disgruntled goblins."

"I wouldn't describe them as disgruntled, exactly," Malfoy said. "Less than fully gruntled, certainly, but they're still reasonable people. Beings. Things."

"But they're not wizards," Ron said, "and they're not going to let you talk your way out of this."

Malfoy suddenly focused on something over Ron's shoulder, and his back went very stiff and straight. "Why don't we let them decide, shall we?"

Ron glanced back and saw that Stonefoot's gang had returned, still in their ridiculous pinstriped suits. They pushed into the pizzeria and fanned out immediately, and Ron saw one of them (he wasn't sure which one was Blackpick anymore) carrying Thunderstrike the hammer. Some of the others also had mysterious bulges under their coats which might've been concealed weapons, but Ron couldn't imagine what sorts they might be. "Well, hello, Mr. Malfoy," Stonefoot called out. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Stonefoot, my good goblin," Malfoy said. "I'm sorry I wasn't available to speak with you last night, but I'm afraid I had a bit of a run-in with some ruffians and was indisposed."

"Well, the important thing is, you're here now," Stonefoot said amiably. "And you're late on your payment. That's important, too."

Malfoy's mouth twitched slightly, but he didn't quite frown. "I'm afraid you must be mistaken, Stonefoot. I'm sure I paid you on Tuesday, I distinctly remember"

"The payment was short," Stonefoot said. "Over thirty Galleons short, to be precise, and you're collecting interest."

"I'm sure you're mistaken," Malfoy said, pulling a short scroll from his sleeve, "because as you'll note right here, in subsection seven, clause thirteen-b, the interest rate on the principle is set at"

Stonefoot reached out and crumpled the scroll before Malfoy had even finished unrolling it. "I know the contract," Stonefook said. "And I'm saying that you were short."

"Because I overpaid you last week," Malfoy said, "which I was going to explain before you started interrupting me."

Stonefoot looked at one of his mates and shrugged. "I don't recall you overpaying last week."

"Thought he paid same as always," the other goblins said.

"I paid you fifty Galleons extra!" Malfoy snapped, and pulled out one of his little black ledgers. "You see, it's right here, in black and white"

He thrust the ledger at Stonefoot, who took it and examined it swiftly. He then, very precisely, tore out the last page. "I don't remember any extra payment," he said with a nasty smirk.

Malfoy's face was getting very pink, and he glanced among the goblins very quickly. Ron stood up quickly, drawing far too much attention to himself. "He's got you there, mate," he said slowly, with a great deal of eyebrow waggling that he hoped communicated his hasty plan. "You might as well take him down to the vault and give him his money."

Sadly, Malfoy chose that moment to be thick as a post. "Vault? What vault? I don't know what"

"The _vault,"_ Ron said, "in the _cellar._ You know, the one you can almost _fall into?"_

Malfoy blinked. "Oh. Right. Um. I didn't realize you'd, uh, set it up yet."

"I've just been working on it," Ron said.

Malfoy wiped his palms on his robes, then took a deep breath. He may have even deliberately puffed his chest out. "Well, Stonefoot, since it seems my colleague has, er, finished his little project, why don't I take you down to the _vault_ and we can settle accounts like gentlemenI mean gentlebeings?"

Stonefoot looked suspicious, but either he was some special combination of stupid and cocky or Ron had been far more subtle than he realized. "All right," he said, and snapped his fingers. Two other goblins, including the one carrying the big damn hammer, followed him and Malfoy into the cellar. Ron tried not to think of what that hammer might do if it were pounded into Malfoy's head. It probably wouldn't gush tomato sauce, that was for certain.

That left four goblins still upstairs with Ron, which weren't great odds, but he supposed he'd overcome slightly worse. And it wasn't as if he were alone. He grabbed the mop that Tiffer was still doggedly pushing around the floor and dragged it into the kitchen corridor, the elf clinging to the handle with arms and legs. "Tiffer," he said quietly, "house elves can do powerful magic, can't you?"

"We can does some," Tiffer acknowledged. "We is only using it for proper masters, though. The bond between an elf and master 'tis very powerful, and we is not profaning it with dirty money." He spat, and then immediately wiped it up.

"I'm not asking you to do anything you're, er, uncomfortable with," Ron said quickly. "But Malfoy's your master, isn't he?"

"Yes," Tiffer said suspiciously.

"And these goblins are nasty pieces of work, aren't they?"

"The goblinses 'tis very very nasty," Tiffer agreed.

"So," Ron said, "wouldn't you say that you've got the rightno, make that the _duty_ to stop the goblins from beating Malfoy to death with great big hammers?"

Tiffer squirmed in place for a moment. "What does Mr. Weasley have in mind?" he finally asked.

Ron had formulated a weak plan, but he didn't have time to explain it, because someone in the cellar started screaming. He really, really hoped it wasn't Malfoy, but there was no time to be certain because the four goblins on the ground floor all rushed him at once, trying to get to the cellar stairs. He pushed Tiffer behind himmore from instinct than for real protectionand grabbed a sizable pot lid from the countertop. Holding the lid out before him like a shield, he rained down hexes on the oncoming goblins, like it was any battle in the war, like it was life or death instead of just life or really painful beating, like more was at stake than just a pizzeria. The narrowness of the corridor helped; he tripped the first one with a well-placed Impediment Jinx, and the rest stumbled over him.

The pot lid was a casualty over the first thrown hammer, which, while not as big as Thunderstrike, bent the lid nearly in two. Ron threw it away and dueled properly, Stunning one goblin and knocking another one back on its knees. A third was up, though, and he threw some sort of metal discus with nasty pointy bits along the edge, bits that Ron was sure would open his head up from chin to crown

except the discus made a sudden U-turn in mid-air and flew right back at the goblin who'd thrown it. At the last second, it rotated so the flat side hit him in the face, and he was knocked flat on the ground with a bloody nose. Beyond him, Tiffer pumped his fist in the air and hitched up his tablecloth with the other hand. "Take that, you nasty goblinses!" he squeaked. "You is not harming my masters!"

The other two conscious goblins realized they were hemmed in, and Ron had no regrets about tying them up and letting Tiffer haul them out of the door. He raced downstairs, imagining the worst, but there were no corpses in the cellar and no puddles of blood, or even tomato sauce. Just Malfoy, frantically stacking boxes against the crude door that covered the abandoned tunnel. "Help me with this," he said, "I can still hear them moving around back there."

"Yes, I took care of the ones upstairs," Ron said, levitating a stack of crates over. "I'm fine, by the way, thanks for asking."

Malfoy huffed at him. "Yes, yes, laugh it up, Weasley. You'll be pleased as punch when Stonefoot gets out of this tunnel and sends half his tribe against us."

"I don't think goblins have tribes"

"Well, what_ever._ He's going to kill me."

Ron shrugged. "Maybe we scared him off."

As it turned out, they didn't, but he didn't sic an army on them. Instead, he sent the Ministry.


	9. Chapter 9

The notice from the Ministry didn't come until Monday, so they did get a weekend of relative peace and quiet. No goblin armies came by, no one fire-bombed the pizzeria, no one smashed the windows in the middle of the night, and even Malfoy seemed to cautiously entertain the idea that they'd managed to chase Stonefoot away.

Of course, Malfoy also reinforced the tunnel door with cast-iron bars and bought an enormous repeating-action crossbow, which he hid behind the counter, "just in case". Ron tried to explain that magic was already an enormous advantage over goblins, and even showed Malfoy the important parts of the book, but Malfoy wasn't interested. "There is something psychologically valuable about being able to put a very sharp piece of metal through your enemy's skull," he insisted.

"As opposed to just cutting him in half with a hex," Ron said.

"Exactly," Malfoy said. "Large pointy objects are more satisfying."

"Wands are pointy objects, too."

"Well, size does matter."

Ron let _that_ conversation drop in a hurry.

Monday even started on a promising basis, when Ron arrived expecting another frantic day in the kitchen. Instead he found the restaurant echoing with extremely loud Italian opera and Malfoy cheerfully tallying receipts on the counter. The register, now sporting a very large dent in one side, was dinging sluggishly at random intervals, but it also didn't seem up to any sudden movements, so Ron took that as a positive sign.

"What's going on back there?" Ron asked Malfoy, nearly shouting to make himself heard.

"I don't know and I don't care," Malfoy replied brightly. "Blaise is back and if it makes him happy, I forbid you to question it."

"Has he said where he's been?" Ron asked.

"Again, as long as he's back, I don't care."

Ron stuck his head in the kitchen, where Blaise was singing along with the tenor line of a duet; Tiffer was taking the soprano. "Welcome back," he called uncertainly, after watching them work for a while.

Blaise turned and grinned hugely at him. "Weasley! Just the man I wanted to see." And he left the cutting board to embrace Ron fiercely, patting him vigorously on the back a few times.

"Good to see you too," Ron said uneasily.

"I want to thank you," Blaise said without letting go. "I _need_ to thank you."

Ron forced himself to smile, even though Blaise wasn't looking at him. "You're, er, you're welcome."

"You see," Blaise told him, "I found my destiny."

Ron twisted out of the hug before it could go on any further. "Have you now? That's great, mate, really...special. Congratulations."

"It should've been so clear before," Blaise explained, going glassy-eyed. "The cookbook, you see, it was a sign. I realize that now. My father is calling me from beyond the grave, as the last of my name, to embrace my heritage and history. To defend the familial honor. To carry on the proud house of Zabini into the new century. And to make lots of pizza."

"Is he now," Ron said.

Blaise nodded, grinning brilliantly. "Yes! And I'd never have figured it out if it weren't for you!"

"What about the widows?" Ron dared to ask.

Blaise made a rude noise. "Fuck the widows," he said. "Figuratively, of course. My personal fulfillment is right here in this kitchen. My home." He then lunged forward and grabbed Ron's head, planting a garlic-scented kiss on either cheek, before turning back to the opera and the stove.

"Anything I can do to help," Ron mumbled, and went to the sink to wash his face off.

Thus, when the notice from the Ministry arrived, Ron wasn't elbow-deep in calzones and marinara sauce. He wasn't frantically fighting with the register or hauling ingredients up from the cellar. He was, in fact, kneeling on the floor, trying to sort out a wobbly chair. Blaise had the kitchen, Dennis had the register, Malfoy was doing Merlin knew what in the cellar...and Ron was poking the leg of a chair with his wand, growing and shrinking it by millimeters because the damned thing just wouldn't stand _properly,_ and for the first time all month, he truly had nothing better at the restaurant to do.

(It occurred to him that this might have been a sign itself, but only much later, long after it would've done any good.)

The fact that he was in the dining area meant he was the first one to see the owl swoop into the pizzeria over the heads of a couple of customers. It swerved around Dennis, who screamed a little, and hung a sharp turn down in the direction of the cellar, out of sight. Ron waited for a moment, but there was no sound to indicate that the owl had crashed into the cellar door. "Dennis," he called, "you know if we're supposed to have owls in here?"

"I don't know, Mr. Weasley," Dennis said warily. "Why wouldn't we?"

"Seems like it'd violate some kind of code." Ron climbed to his feetlet the damned chair wobbleand followed the course of the owl into the cellar. Malfoy had set up his "desk" again, and the owl was perched on the pile of crates still partially blocking the tunnel door. Malfoy himself was reading a short, vivid green scroll, and his eyes were open so widely that Ron feared he'd been sent some kind of anti-blinking hex. "What is it?" he asked.

"I," Malfoy said slowly, "am going to prison."

_"What?"_

"I'm to report to the Ministry on the eighth of September for a hearing," Malfoy said weakly, and waved the scroll in Ron's face. Ron snatched it up and skimmed it. "They'll seize all my assets, of course, but Blaise can take over full control of the pizzeria. I've always liked Azkaban in the fall, really. Very grey."

"Malfoy," Ron said, "this is from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures."

"I should like my tombstone to say something to the effect of, 'Aren't you sorry now that I'm gone?'"

"You're being _censured,_ not sent to prison." Ron still read it a second time, more slowly, and yes, that was all it said"'...a complaint has been filed against Mr. Draco Abraxas Malfoy of Anglecaster, Wiltshire, for unlawful discrimination against a magical being under section 2.3.5.66.1b of the Interspecies Cooperation Act, by Mr. Stonefoot, son of Ironhook, clan Blerg'that little _shite!"_

"Tell Blaise I'm sorry," Malfoy said as if Ron hadn't spoken. "And do take care of Tiffer for me, the poor thing will be heartbroken."

Ron smacked Malfoy on the back of the head. "You're not going to Azkaban, Malfoy. They don't send people to prison for discrimination. Well, not unless it's the kind where you kill people, that's right out, but"

"It's all a _plot,"_ Malfoy said, and began to pace. "The complaint will get me censured. The censure will cause us to lose the business license. Without the business license I can't make any money and will have to sell off all my possessions before consigning myself to a life of crime, for which I will be sent to prison on account of my prior record."

"Don't be an ass," Ron said. "You're not going to lose your business license for one complaint. It's totally baseless anyway."

"You don't think so?" Malfoy said. "They didn't want me to have the license in the first place, Weasley, in case you've forgotten. That hateful little gnome Thriggins is probably giggling with delight at the prospect of taking away the business. He never liked me."

"Except," Ron said, "there's the part where this is utter crap. They're not going to do anything over a false accusation."

"And how do you propose to prove it's false, hmm?" Malfoy said.

"Go to the hearing and say so?"

"Hah, that's a laugh..."

Ron took a deep breath and released it slowly. "You know you're a paranoid little bastard, don't you?"

"It's not paranoia," Malfoy sniffed. "It's perfectly justifiable suspicion of my many enemies, who I can no longer even count up, since _somebody_ incorporated my List into a puttanesca sauce!"

"It was a marinara, actually," Ron said.

"Not the point." Malfoy flopped back into his chair, which slid backwards several feet. "I'm doomed, Weasley, plain and simple. I would say it had been a pleasure working with you, but it really hasn't."

He flung a hand over his face dramatically, which caused his chair to flip over backwards. The owl startled and tried to perch on Ron's head. He beat it off with the notice, which he then unrolled and reread, half-disbelieving...until he got to the signature at the bottom.

"So, just to be clear," he said slowly, "you're not going to fight the complaint?"

"Isn't that what I just got done saying?" Malfoy said, still lying on the floor.

"Just checking." Ron rolled up the scroll and tucked it into his pocket. "I'll be back some time this evening."

"What?" Malfoy pushed himself up on his elbows, staring at Ron from between his own knees. "What do you mean, you'll be back?"

"I just have to run a quick errand," Ron said.

"Wait just a minute!" Malfoy scrambled to his feet and started to chase Ron up the stairs. "Aren't you going to argue with me? Threaten me? Drag me around by the ankles a bit?"

"No," Ron said.

"Why _not?"_

He shrugged. "You've made your decision, haven't you?" He nearly had to shout over Blaise's opera. "I'll just be a few minutes."

"But you're supposed to be threatening me!" Malfoy said. "I thought we had a...a _system_ going here!"

"A system?"

"Yes! You disagree with me on everything, I explain how I'm right, you shout at me and threaten to leave! We were really quite good at it!"

Ron stopped in the middle of the kitchen, dodging several levitating pizzas. "Malfoy, would you actually change your mind if I did threaten you?"

"Well, it would largely depend on what you threaten me with," he said, folding his arms. "But as you may have noticed, I'm open to persuasion."

Ron sighed. "Malfoy, go downstairs and finish doing whatever the hell you do down there or I'll lock you in the tunnel."

"There! You see?" Malfoy patted him on the arm. "That's more like it!"

"I'll be back before lunch."

"No!" Malfoy grabbed his arm. "No, see, we were just getting started! I'm not actually going to do what you say!"

"Malfoy, I'm not going to argue with you."

"Yes, you are!" Malfoy actually stomped his foot. "I demand that you threaten me! Or at least manhandle me more some! This is entirely out of character!"

"I'm sorry to disappoint you," Ron said slowly, "but I don't want to manhandle you!"

"Oh, come on, you certainly enjoyed it well enough on Thursday."

"I wasn't aware that _you_ did!"

"I didn't, but it's the principle of the thing!" Malfoy tugged on his arm again. "Go on. Pinch me, hex me, insult my competence, something!"

Ron shook him off, and said, "Blaise! Blaise, tie him up or something, will you, so I can get out of here?"

"Absolutely not," Blaise said. "No kinky stuff in my kitchen."

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Quiet, you. This is between Weasley and myself."

"No," Ron said, "it's between you and a Healer, because you're _mad."_

"Well, I'm sorry if I happen to take comfort in our little routines, when the rest of my life is collapsing about my ears and I'm about to go to _prison!"_

Ron rolled his eyes, grabbed a couple of fresh calzones off a tray, and Disapparated.

The lobby of the Ministry looked much like it had three weeks ago when they came for the business license, the Fountain of Magical Brethren on one end and the War Memorial on the other. Ron quickly checked his wand, then headed to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. He exited the lift with several flying corgis and a sunburnt vampire, and it took him two wrong turns and a polite inquiry with a talking goat before he found his way to a large lobby with the plaque: COMMITTEE FOR INTERSPECIES OPPORTUNITY AND ADVANCEMENT.

"Hi," he said to the witch at the front desk. "Is Miss Granger in?"

She checked several calendars, a clock, and a set of dice marked with runes, then shrugged. "May I ask who is calling on her, sir?"

"Ron Weasley."

She checked the dice again, then eyed him suspiciously. "Can I see some identification?"

At that moment, Hermione stepped out of her office with her cloak and handbag. "Hilde, I'm just going to step out for lunch for aoh! Ron!"

"Hey," Ron said. "You, er, have a minute?"

Her eyes narrowed, and Ron knew that Harry and Ginny had already updated her on the Pizza Situation. "I suppose I can make some time on the schedule," she said slowly.

"You have a one o'clock meeting with a Mr. Dobby," Hilde said helpfully.

Ron held up the calzones, wrapped in a paper napkin. "Peace?"

He could tell she was trying to frown at him, but wasn't quite managing it. "All right," she said. "Come in."

Her office was pretty much what Ron expectedneurotically neat and stuffed to the very brim with books, scrolls, and photographs of her shaking hands with various beings. She had a great whale of a desk, and she sat behind it, so Ron wedged the other chair into the corner rather that face her across a mile of polished wood. He conjured a plate for the calzones, and she conjured a pot of tea. "Look," he said, "I don't know what you've heard..."

"About what?" she asked. "Your experiment in the culinary arts, or your partners in crime?"

"It's not a crime," Ron snapped. "No matter what Harry or Ginny or anyone else wants to make of it."

Her face softened a bit. "Of course. I apologize. What sort of calzones are these?"

"Er, I'm not entirely sure." He broke a corner off one and nibbled. "Tastes like pineapple and ham."

Hermione looked at him oddly for a moment, and yes, that was definitely a smile. "Ron Weasley, what on earth have you gotten yourself into?"

He took a deep breath and passed her the scroll. "Actually, it's more about what Malfoy's gotten himself into."

She didn't even have to unroll it. "Yes, Mr. Stonefoot. I took the complaint myself."

"What exactly did he complain about?" Ron asked.

Hermione swallowed a bite of calzone and delicately wiped her mouth. "You know I can't release that information to a third party. If you want the details, you can come to the hearing."

"Okay, let me put it this way," Ron said. "Did Stonefoot's 'complaint' mention the great ugly hammer he was swinging around? Or that I started it?"

Hermione's eyebrows rose sharply. "What do you mean?"

Ron quickly explained about the loan, and the advice Bill had given him. "I orchestrated the whole thing," he told her, which wasn't entirely untruthful. "I reckon Stonefoot's too cowardly to get beaten again, so he's trying to stir up trouble some other way."

Hermione had finished her calzone and was drawing patterns in the crumbs with her finger. "Hold on," she said. "If Stonefoot's threatened Malfoy before, why isn't he here challenging the complaint in person?"

"Because he's insane," Ron said, and sighed. "He thinks it's all part of a conspiracy against him and there's nothing he can do about it."

"Why on Earth?"

"Completely. Barmy." Ron vanished the plate and poured himself a cup of tea. "They both are, actually, but Blaise is mostly harmless. Unless you count the garlic breath."

She fixed her own cup and watched the milk swirl in for a moment. "This is all very interesting, but you know it's outside my department. Now, if you go to the Goblin Liason Office and file a complaint with the bank"

"Malfoy doesn't want to," Ron said. "He'd have to admit he needed a loan in the first place, and then ask for help, and frankly I think his head would explode if he tried."

Hermione raised an eyebrow at him. "So if he doesn't want to ask for help, what are you doing here?"

"Er. Helping?"

That eyebrow just stayed up.

"Look, if I let him handle this he's going to do something insane," Ron said quickly. "So I thought, if I could, um, take care of the situation for him..."

Hermione's hand went up. "Ron, I am not going to do you any favors just because you're my friend."

"I didn't expect you to," he admitted, though it would've been nice if she had. "So think of it as me turning myself in, okay? I'm the one who started the fight with Stonefoot, Malfoy's...I really hate to use the word 'innocent' here, but..."

"All right," Hermione said, then more firmly, "all right. I can't actually erase Stonefoot's original complaint, but I can certainly append a statement to the original text, and round up the committee to re-evaluate the summons." She pulled out a fresh piece of parchment and a quill. "Now, as of the night of the twentieth of August..."

He explained the story to her about seventeen times over, while she made notes, and in the end there was a two-foot scroll that went out to Hilde to duplicate. "Thank you," he said. "Really."

"Well, I am just taking a statement," she said. "I can't guarantee the committee will change our decision."

"Yeah, but at the very least I'll be part of the complaint, right?" Ron asked. "So if all else fails, I'll tie Malfoy to a chair and do the hearing thing myself."

Hermione's forehead suddenly wrinkled, and she frowned a little bit. "Ron, just out of curiosityis your name on the business license for the restaurant?"

He blinked. "UmI dunno. Why?"

"Well, if it is," she said, "then legally, you own an equal share of the business, so you could talk to the Goblin Liaison Office yourself."

"Excuse me?" Ron asked. His voice may have risen slightly higher than was strictly normal.

"That's what the business license is," Hermione said slowly, in the exact same tone of voice she normally used to quote _Hogwarts: A History_ at him. "The owners of the business all have to sign off on it. Didn't you know that?"

"Not...exactly," Ron said. "That's, er, that's very interesting."

Hermione reached out and took his hand. "Ron, do you have any idea what you've gotten yourself into?"

"I thought I had," he admitted. "I thought I was just giving Malfoy and Zabini a hand, you know?"

"Do you know how you're going to get yourself out of it?" she asked.

Ron opened his mouth to say something like _I can just walk away any time,_ except it suddenly hit him that he _couldn't,_ really, not if he technically owned the place. Well, part of the place. The point is, he was _committed_ to it, on a piece of paper somewhere inside the Ministry if nowhere else. He'd been committed to it from the very beginning and he hadn't even known.

Had Malfoy?

"Ron?" Hermione said, looking perplexed. "Are you all right?"

"I...yeah," he stammered, "thanks for everything, Hermione, really. I gotta, um, go. Now. Bye." He kissed her on the cheek and hustled out of her office. He suddenly had a really urgent need to get back to the pizzeria and find Malfoy, and then they were going to have one hell of a talk.


	10. Chapter 10

When Ron returned to the pizzeria, however, Malfoy was gone, and neither Dennis nor Blaise knew where to find him. "Said he needed to see some people about some things," Blaise said, actually turning down the music so they could talk at a normal volume. "Why is he going to prison?"

"He isn't," Ron said. "Did he say when he'd be back?"

"No," Blaise said, "and I don't appreciate you two keeping me in the dark about things. This is my restaurant, too, you know."

"Yeah, well, that makes three of us," Ron snapped, and kept looking.

A search of the cellar didn't immediately yield any information, until he broke the lock on the tunnel door and found a row of filing cabinets at track level. They were labeled in tiny scribbles and vaguely obscene runes, but Ron still managed to find the business license on his third guess, and yes, there was his signature in the box labeled _Proprietors._ He'd been so eager to get done with Malfoy and get home that he hadn't even paid attention to what he'd been signing.

He owned the pizzeria. One-third, in fact, of the pizzeria. Malfoy had _given_ him part of the pizzeria, without telling him, and let him go on thinking he was just helping and he could walk away any time. Malfoy would've let him walk away...except, no, that wasn't true, Malfoy had tried to keep him around, had even mopped floors and fried garlic in order to keep Ron coming in. But he hadn't told Ron the truth, and he must've known Ron didn't know it, and what would he have done if Ron had announced he was never coming back?

"Blaise?" Ron called. "Can we talk for a minute?"

"Depends," Blaise called. "Can you talk and slice olives at the same time?"

Archie had come in for the dinner shift, and Tiffer was running out every few minutes to make certain he hadn't dozed off. Ron took up a knife and started chopping without really paying attention. "Why didn't you tell me I owned part of the pizzeria?"

Blaise accidentally spat a partially-chewed piece of garlic into a vat of alfredo sauce. "You _what?"_

"I own part of the pizzeria," Ron repeated, fishing the garlic out for him. "Because I signed the business license."

"Who told you that?"

"Hermione did."

"What's Granger know about business licensing, anyway?"

"Enough," Ron said. "So you didn't know about it?"

"Absolutely not!" Blaise's brows furrowed. "Draco said it was just a formality to have you sign."

"Nope." Ron looked at the pile of olives he'd sliced, and tossed them into the sauce. Blaise scowled at him but started ladling the sauce into a crust anyway. "I own a third of the business."

"Which third?"

"I sort of fancy the dining area, actually."

Blaise piled the crusts up with shredded chicken and spinach, and after a few moments asked, "If you own the dining area, why doesn't Draco pay you?"

"I'm pretty sure it's because he's an ass," Ron said.

Blaise shrugged, and started sprinkling pine nuts from a skillet onto the pizza.

"Just to be clear," Ron said, "you're not actually annoyed about this?"

"Not really," Blaise said. "Though Draco might want the dining area, in which case I suppose you'd have to settle for the cellar. Though if he _does_ go to prison, I suppose this means the place has a chance of staying open."

"He's not going to prison," Ron insisted, but didn't have the energy to explain.

Draco was gone well into the dinner rush, and between keeping Archie awake and keeping the food moving, they didn't have a lot of time to discuss their recently-discovered business partnership. Ron was so busy that he didn't have time to think about the pizzeria, or what he was going to do about it, because he obviously couldn't _keep_ it (and yes, he knew he was treating it like a small dog that had followed him home, because in retrospect that was exactly what had happenedexcept instead of a dog, it had been Malfoy, and it hadn't been so much _following _as _stalking, _but the principle was similar enough).Ron was busy, and thus he was completely unprepared for Draco to Apparate into the middle of the kitchen and start screaming. "How dare you?" he said, waving a fistful of bright green parchment. "How _dare_ you?"

"I don't know," Ron said. "What've I done?"

Malfoy chucked the crumpled parchment at Ron's head. "Meddling in my affairs! Invading my privacy!"

"Oh, that." Ron carefully set aside a tray of pizza. "I actually thought I was doing you a favor."

"A favor." Malfoy snorted. "A _favor. _You call that a favor?"

Ron picked up the parchment and smoothed it out against a cabinet door. It had Hermione's signature on the bottom, and a couple of phrases jumped out at him. _New evidence...reconsider their decision...no longer obligated to appear at the hearing scheduled for 8th September..._ "Sorry," he said, "explain to me again why you're _angry_ about this?"

"I was taking care of it!" Malfoy spat. "I had the situation entirely under control!"

"You were lying on the floor moaning about prison!"

"I was waiting for inspiration!"

Ron folded his arms. "Look, I didn't do anything but tell the truth, and now you're off the hook. No more hearing. Yay?"

"The truth," Malfoy sneered, "yes, I'm certain you and Granger had a grand time telling _truths_ about me. Had a grand laugh at my expense, did you?"

"You are the most paranoid little piece of"

"It's not paranoia, since you obviously _are _out to get me!"

"I was _helping _you, Malfoy, not planning your assassination!"

_"I didn't need your help!" _he shouted back, practically trembling with emotion. "I didn't _want_ your help! I was in the middle of making my own arrangements when I received that charming missive, because you'd been skulking around behind my back sharing secrets with your little friends and turning all my efforts into wasted time!"

"You know, I was expecting just a little gratitude here"

"Gratitude? For what? I didn't ask you to do anything!"

"You wanted to hire a hero," Ron snapped. "Well, here I am, saving your arse from your imaginary prison term. You're welcome."

Malfoy's lip curled up. "Yes, Weasley, I imagine you were so _very_ heroic. Did you do Granger right there on her desk, or get a room?"

_"Gelaro!"_ Ron was only half-aware of his own wand swinging in front of him, but for his own sake Malfoy was lucky enough to dodge the curse; a cloud of icicles blossomed from the wall where he'd just been standing. "You take that back this instant, you miserable little cunt!"

"Oh, please," Malfoy said, though he was hiding behind the rubbish bin, "I saw you two during the war. I know how it is. I just thought, since she's so damn clever, she'd have given up on you by now."

"That's none of your fucking business!" Ron snapped.

"And my business is none of hers!" Malfoy said. "First you let _Potter_ into my restaurant, now this"

"Actually," Ron said, "isn't it _my_ restaurant too?"

Malfoy seemed phased only for a moment. "You didn't want it!" he shot back. "You never wanted it! You'd have walked away weeks ago if your precious Gryffindor sensibilities didn't keep you coming back to _help_ us, so you could keep playing _hero!"_

"You nodded me!" Ron shouted. "And you _lied_ to me!"

"It was a creative omission of the facts!"

Blaise suddenly pounded on the bottom of a stockpot with a metal ladle. _"BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP AND STOP TRAUMATIZING THE CUSTOMERS!"_

Ron covered his ears, but Blaise stopped almost immediately, and silence reigned. Absolute silence, in fact. Malfoy wasn't screaming, Blaise wasn't talking, and the voices that should've been coming from the dining area were conspicuously absent. Ron could hear the saucepots bubbling, the icicles cracking, and somewhere, Tiffer sniffling pathetically.

"Out of my restaurant," Malfoy said suddenly, popping up from behind the bin. "You're fired."

"You never hired me in the first place"

"Then quit already, like you keep threatening to do!"

Ron rolled his eyes. "I thought you liked it when I threatened you?"

"I don't need to hear this," Blaise said, and raised the ladle over the pot again. "So either go off somewhere and have make-up sex or...or just go. Away."

Malfoy grimaced, but Ron was suddenly, inexplicably tired. "Fine," he said. "Sorry to make a mess of _your_ restaurant, Blaise. Malfoy..." He couldn't even find words for his anger, so he just Disapparated, and never heard Malfoy's reply.

Ron didn't go back to the restaurant the next day, though he had a whole list of reasonsto tell Malfoy off for his paranoia, to break Malfoy's nose for the dig at Hermione, to demand Malfoy take Ron's name off the business license, to demand his share of the profits, or to ask Blaise, once and for all, why the hell he apparently thought Ron and Malfoy were fucking. Ron didn't go back the day after that, or any of the following days, either. It was clear now that he'd made a tremendous mistake by ever setting foot in the place. Business license or not, he promised himself he'd have nothing more to do with the pizzeria or with Draco fucking Malfoy.

Instead, he threw himself into the list marked JOBS in the Burrow's kitchen. Errol had moved in with the chickens at some point, and treacherously joined in the defense of the old henhouse, but by the end of the week Ron had torn it down and rebuilt a bigger, better one. He'd also cleaned the house from top to bottom, changing bed linens for no good reason and scrubbing things with an old toothbrush. He weeded and de-gnomed the garden, restocked the pantry, and by Thursday afternoon was reduced to sitting in the kitchen in his underwear, eating cold fish casserole and catching up on all the WWN serials he'd missed out on. He also carefully selected which pieces of post he openedanything from Ginny, Fred or George was categorically ignored (and occasionally locked in the cellar for safety) because he wasn't quite sure he could stand yet to admit that they were right about the badness of the whole pizzeria idea.

Well, partially right. Ron decided this one night after determining experimentally just how much butterbeer a wizard had to drink, and how fast, in order to achieve a buzz. Harry and the others had been partially right about the pizzeria, or at least in the broad outlines. At least they'd been right about Malfoy, who Ron had sworn to never even think about again and thus naturally kept obsessing over like a loose tooth. Malfoy wasn't worth helping. Malfoy wasn't worth dealing with at all. Malfoy was paranoid, petty, arrogant, bad with people, ungrateful, dishonest, insane, and a few other choice adjectives Ron would've come up with if it hadn't reminded him a bit too much of Malfoy's List. Malfoy had clearly just been manipulating Ron and Ron's better nature for his own inscrutable ends, or just for the unpaid labor, and Ron had been an idiot if he'd ever thought there had been more to it than that.

Which he hadn't, of course. That was ridiculous.

(Why _did_ Zabini think they were shagging all the time?)

Ron was still lecturing himself on the Evils of Draco Malfoy (volume three: his stupid, pointy face) when his parents came back from Ibiza at the end of the week. They were both very sunburnt, and his dad appeared to have brought back his own weight in Muggle souvenirs, which he would've immediately started disassembling on the kitchen table if Mum hadn't ordered him upstairs to start unpacking the trunks. Once that was accomplished, she turned her sole attention on Ron. "Oh, dear, aren't you looking peaky? Have you been eating?"

"Yes, Mum," he said, and submitted to having his shirt untucked in the middle of the kitchen so she could poke his stomach. "I've been keeping busy, too."

"Oh, yes, the henhouse looks marvelousI never would've thought of the moat and turret." She finished with his stomach and started examining his face closely. "Honestly, Ronald, have you even looked at a razor recently?"

"Sounds like you had fun in Ibiza."

"Oh, yes, it was marvelously relaxing, and you took such good care of the house while we were gone..." She actually checked his teeth, fingered the ends of his hair, and finally stepped back with a nod and a frown. "What's wrong, dear?"

"Nothing, mum," he said. "Why d'you think something's wrong?"

"Oh, a mother knows, Ronald," she said. "Besides, your brothers and Ginny have been writing the most peculiar lettersthere's obviously something afoot, and it's something to do with you, but none of them are willing to come out and say anything about it."

Ron felt a brief and unfamiliar rush of filial affection, which flickered out when he realized that they weren't actually covering for himthey just wanted to drop the bomb in person, so that they could watch. "I'm fine, Mum," he insisted. "Really. Just...been busy lately. Took care of some things."

She pressed her lips together, because she'd been watching him try to lie for almost two decades, but before she could say anything Dad called down the stairs, "Oh, Molly, come look! I've figured out what that thing does, the one with all the bits, come see! Comeer, oh dear, maybe you'd better stay down there."

They showed Ron their last vacation photos, and he got a detailed summary of Lockhart's latest book before they all sat down to a late supper. Ron watched his mum knead up a loaf of bread for tomorrow's breakfast, and tried not to think about olive oil and basil and the feel of flour in the creases of his knuckles.

"Ron? Are you feeling all right?"

He realized his dad had been talking. "Er, yeah. Fine. Sorry, what?"

"I asked if you'd gotten around to reapplying at the Ministry," he said, scratching at one carefully-bandaged finger with another. "You'd said something about it before we left."

"Oh. Had I?"

"Yes."

He cleared his throat. "I, er, no, not yet. Waiting for you to get home."

"Oh, you didn't have to do that, dear," Mum said. "When we asked you to mind the house, we didn't mean you had to stay cooped up here all summer! It's not as if it's going to walk off without supervision!"

"Right," Dad said, "we took care of that problem years ago."

Ron sighed. "Yeah, look, I'll get on it, all right?"

There was a moment's pause, in which Mum put the bread to rise and Ron toyed with a new hole in his jeans rather than look at them. Then Dad cleared his throat and said, "You know, Ron, if you're still worried about yourerinjury...nobody would think less of you if you didn't reapply"

"Harry says I can do it," Ron muttered.

"Of course you can!" Mum said fiercely, and started making sandwiches. "Those exercise tests are absolutely absurd anyway. Alastor Moody was the best Auror in Britain for years after he lost that leg! It's not like you're out running and chasing and jumping on people like...like _Muggles,_ after all..."

"I was arrested twice in Ibiza," Dad confided. "It was all terribly exciting."

Ron got up and started helping make the sandwiches. "I was thinking, though," he said slowly, "of maybe...looking somewhere else. Not the Ministry, I mean. Just to see what's there."

"And nobody will think less of you for it," Dad repeated firmly.

Mum put a slightly mustardy hand on his shoulder. "We just want you to be happy, dear."

That evening Ron sat at his desk, stared for five minutes, and forced himself to unroll the only scroll there. At the top it said in large curly letters, _APPLICATION FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF MAGICAL LAW ENFORCEMENT, AUROR'S DIVISION._ He dipped his quill, wrote out his name at the top, stared at it for&lt;/font&gt; five more minutes, and then went to lie in bed but couldn't sleep.

Maybe he could limp his way through the fitness exam, bad buttock or not. It made _sense_ for him to become an Aurorit was what Harry was doing, and following Harry had never steered him wrong before. So why couldn't he finish the bloody application?

What he needed was a sign, like Zabini had got. Then again, Zabini's omen hadn't turned out so wellhe was stuck running the pizzeria with bloody buggering Malfoy, who Ron _wasn't _going to think about, except perhaps to wonder what kind of disaster he was going to create in the absence of adult supervision. Perhaps he'd cause some kind of international incident while ordering more olive oil, or Hermione would find out about Tiffer and launch a full-scale investigation into the pizzeria's business practices...but none of that was Ron's business anymore. So why was he worried about it?

It was the business license, that's what it was. Knowing he technically owned the place created an illusion of responsibility, especially combined with Malfoy's obvious raging incompetence. What he should do is go over there tomorrow morning and force Malfoy to take his name off, no matter what, because he needed to cut ties to the place, he needed a clean slate so he could...

What? Stare at his Auror application some more?

But he _had_ to do it, because otherwise it'd always be there in the back of his mind, lurking, nagging at him to check up on. And while Malfoy and Zabini could probably use some checking up on, it wasn't Ron's business to do it, even if he had helped make the place livable and learnt almost all the recipes and knew the trick to getting the hot water tap to shut off. He had to forget the smell of the herbs and the heat of the ovens and the thick gurgling of a sauce about to boil over, because...

Because...

"Bloody hell," he said to the ceiling. "I'm as mad as Zabini."

He couldn't actually _like_ the place, could he?

For the rest of the night, Ron tossed and turned, trying to list off all the reasons he hated the pizzeriaMalfoy's attitude, the long hours, the smell of garlic, Malfoy's whinging, standing at the register, Malfoy's screaming, the more deranged customers, Malfoy's...everything about Malfoy, really, particularly the overwhelming urge he created in Ron to throw him up against the wall and exact serious violence on his person. And it was ridiculous for a war hero to work in a pizzeria anyway, because how could he go from saving the world to selling pizza and calzones?

Except for how, you know, he had. But he hadn't _meant _to. It had just sort of...happened to him. And he'd enjoyed it. Mostly.

But that still didn't mean he could _keep_ doing it...could he?

At six o'clock in the morning, Ron got up, peeked through the curtains, and then went to his desk. After five minutes, he crumpled the Auror application into a ball and threw it away.

 

Epilogue  
Ron slept soundly the rest of the morning, and after a quick shower and a word to his mum he Apparated to Diagon Alley. He strolled through the shops, smiled at passers-by, and generally enjoyed the hell out of a damp, overcast, overall hideous day. He could get used to being mad, he decided, if it always felt this happy.

The pizzeria was jumping with the lunch rush, so it was simple enough to slip into the back without anyone noticing him. He leaned against the edge of the fireplace and watched the crowd move sluggishly through the line, inhaled the smells of the herbs and sauces, listened to the rumble of voices. He waited to get annoyed by the noise, the smells, or the prospect of taking over the register from Dennis for an unspecified number of hours. He didn't. He wasn't exactly enthused by them, either, especially the bit about the register, but they didn't make him want to jump off a bridge, either. Being an Auror probably had its downsides, too.

He was just settling into the unexpectedly warm and fuzzy feeling he got from being back when the Floo coughed open. Malfoy stepped out, took a look around, and spotted Ron. "You're back," he said, glancing Ron up and down.

"I'm back," Ron said.

Malfoy seized him by the elbow and started pulling him forward. "Come on. Tiffer's got a cold and I can't have pizzas full of elf snot, so you'll have to help Blaise in the kitchen, but first I need you to look at some prototype for the delivery boxes because I think they're all hideous but Archie seems attached to the round one."

"Hello," Ron said, "I didn't say I was _back_ back."

"Weasley," he said, "if you didn't intend to come back here to work, you wouldn't have come back at all. You're much too stubborn."

"You're one to talk."

"Yes," Malfoy said, "I am stubborn and suspicious and short-sighted and several other words that start with _s. _I'm also busy, so do try to keep up."

Blaise waved at Ron as they passed with no sign of surprise. Tiffer sneezed from inside his cabinet. Malfoy lead the way down into the cellar, though Ron shook his hands off. "How d'you know I'm not just here to get my name removed from the business license?"

Here Malfoy hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. "Is that why you're here?" he asked quietly.

"No," Ron said.

"Well, then, quit talking nonsense and get over here." There were several different cardboard boxes on Malfoy's desk-of-crates, in different shapes and color patterns, but all were stamped with _Zabini's Pizza_ on the top. "These are for the delivery service. Did I tell you about the delivery service?"

"No," Ron said.

"Well, we're starting a delivery service." He thrust a seven-sided red box and a five-sided green one into Ron's hands. "Now, which of these do you think looks appetizing?"

"Why are you starting a delivery service?" Ron asked. "Is this some new part of your grand plot?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Malfoy said. "The delivery service is a logical expansion of the business. Now, which box do you prefer?"

Ron thrust both boxes at him. "Your great big plan to right the name of Malfoy, remember? Revenge and lists and wild things?"

Malfoy took the boxes back, stacking them on top of something that looked like a flat, checkered hatbox. "Oh, that," he said with much too much casualness. "It's, er, currently on hold. Suspended, you might say, until further notice and re-evaluation."

"Re-evaluation?"

"Well, I can't very well exact my revenge without my List, can I?" he said irritably, and started re-arranging boxes. "And the fact that I can't even reconstruct it from memory suggests that I was perhaps being a bit... enthusiastic."

"Really," Ron said.

"So that's currently up for re-evaluation," he said, "and in the meantime, I've a pizzeria to run, so pick a damn box."

Ron picked up another five-sided box, with different graphics, mostly because it reminded him of chocolate frogs. "Does this mean you're not angry that I helped you out of the hearing anymore?"

"Oh, I'm still angry about that," Malfoy said. "But Blaise says I should try being gracious about it."

Ron blinked at him. "You? Gracious?"

"It's entirely possible," Malfoy said. "After all, if you can be humble, anything's possible."

"I'm notwhat?"

"Never mind," Malfoy said. "Box."

Ron set the box aside. "Malfoy, what d'you mean, humble?"

Malfoy sighed, and folded his arms. "What are you doing back here, Weasley? Humor me, if you will."

"I...well..." Ron poked the hatbox-looking box, which did have a certain charm to it. "I decided it was better to do what I enjoyed than what I felt obligated to do."

"Exactly," Malfoy said. "You got off your high bloody horse and decided to descend among the masses."

"I wasn't" Ron tried to protest, but Malfoy cut him off.

"Not that there's anything wrong with being above the masses," he said airily. "It's my preferred place of residence, after all. But honestly, all that pretension about being a _war hero_ was getting on my bloody nerves."

"I am a war hero," Ron said. "I just...happen to make pizzas, too."

Malfoy rolled his eyes. "Whatever makes you happy, Weasley."

"Oh, fuck you."

"I wish you would."

Ron's head snapped up so quickly he was surprised it didn't make an audible snap. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Malfoy said, and if his face seemed a little pinker than normal, that might've just been the dingy cellar lighting. "I've only been flirting with you for weeks, you know, you could possibly try not to be dense about it."

"So that was deliberate!" Ron cried. "Er...why?"

"Don't go fishing for compliments, Weasley, it's rude."

"No, I'm serious_why?_ I though we were, you know, practically enemies."

Malfoy shrugged. "I suppose there's a certain novel charm in your persistance. Your arse is not entirely unpleasant. Also, I'm quite possibly insane."

"Join the club," Ron said weakly.

"So I supposed," he said doggedly, "that if we were all going to be seizing the day and all that, I might as well go for it. The worst you could do is scream and try to hex me, after all, and since you do that fairly regularly under normal circumstances I didn't see much of a risk."

Ron rubbed his eyes for a moment, but Malfoy was still shuffling boxes on the crate desk with a certain stiffness in his back that suggested another tiff was all but imminent. "So you're saying you want to have sex with me?" he asked. "Just for clarity's sake."

"Yes," he said. "Necessity apparently makes strange, and I hope rather frequent, bedfellows."

Ron looked Malfoy over, at his skinny, pointy face and the tailored dress robes that hugged his arse and shoulders in odd lines. He had slender hands, too, and soft hair when it wasn't full of flour and cream sauce. "Why the hell not?" Ron blurted. "Except, you know, for how we drive each other insane and I kind of want to punch you a lot."

"I'm sure you can restrain yourself," Malfoy said, and suddenly straightened up and kissed him. His mouth was wet and thin and he used his teeth far too much, but he was warm and solid against Ron's chest, and anyway, they both were mad. Ron pressed back, and decided that this was probably one of the better mistakes he'd ever made.


End file.
